Christian Fuchs (2010). European Journal of Social Theory, 13, 173-192 .DOI: 10.1177/1368431010362294
Fuchs critically examines Habermas's public sphere in that it addresses only bourgeois communication sphere and proposes alternative media as critical media. His approach is described as:
Herbert Marcuse (1978) argues that art can only be a societal factor as autonomous art. Art would be a part of society, but one that transcends capitalist society by constituting an autonomous sphere of aesthetical forms that transcend capitalism. The beauty of art is not a portrayal of society as it is, but a metaphor for society as it could be. The notion of the autonomy and functionless character of art that Adorno and Marcuse described can be generalized not just for art, but for all alternative media products (including also expression in the area of popular culture, not just the high arts). Alternative media at the form level of the products have a radical potential if they transcend their societal context and have the potential to subvert experience. In the case of critical forms, the subversion of the experience of capitalism is an indirect one, in the case of critical content it is a more direct one. (p. 188)
Marcuse, Herbert. (1978) The Aesthetic Dimension. Boston: Beacon Press.
Showing posts with label critical. Show all posts
Showing posts with label critical. Show all posts
Tuesday, July 12, 2011
Monday, February 1, 2010
Looking White People in the Eye
Razack, Shrene. (1998). Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
Razack criticizes that postcolonial discourse of cultural difference makes power relations invisible and keeps dominant cultural norms, white supremacy, in place by culturalizing social domination, in other words, replacing the domination of race, gender, and class with the language of culture. Thus, in the case of sexual violence involving Aboriginal women and immigrant women, both victims and attackers are often “culturalized, that is, understood as cultural and frozen in time, rather than as dynamic, historical, and social” (p. 19). Looking at sexual violence and the process of refugee determination, Razack asserts that women’s realities should be understood within the structures of patriarchy, capitalism, and white supremacy.
Chapter 3. What is to Be Gained by Looking White People in the Eye? Race in Sexual Violence Cases
Razack states that culture talk is a double-edged sword, as “it packages difference as inferiority and obscures both gender-based and racial domination, yet cultural considerations are important for contexualizing oppressed groups’ claims for justice, for improving their access to services, and for requiring dominant groups to examine the invisible cultural advantages they enjoy” (p. 58).
Problems, however, arise from the fact is culture is often uttered as an unchangeable set of values and customs autonomous from historical and social contexts. Razack writes, “culture is taken to mean values, beliefs, knowledge, and customs that exist in a timeless and unchangeable vacuum outside of patriarchy, racism, imperialism, and colonialism” (p. 58). Thus she calls attention to sexism interlocked with racism.
Razack contests that white society preempts racism and sexism by replacing the discoursesof racism and sexism with culture. Calling this process culturalization, Razack states:
In its modern form, overt racism, which rests on the notion of biologically based inferiority, coexists with a more covert practice of domination encoded in the assumption of cultural or acquired inferiority. This ‘culturalization of racism,’ whereby Black inferiority is attributed to ‘cultural deficiency, social inadequacy, and technological underdevelopment,’ thrives in a social climate that is officially pluralist. (p. 60)
Razack also points out the culturalization of sexism, writing that cultural consideration are used to defend male sexual violence offenders while also being used to intensify prejudices against minority, in particular Aboriginal, women. In this regard, Razack pays attention to the tendency that women of color distance themselves from the culturalization of violence, as seen in the statement, ‘No culture condones violence’ included in the report of the Coalition of Immigrant and Visible Minority Women of British Colombia.
Observing cross-cultural sensitivity training, Razack contests that such training is of little use unless it is pursued in the context of the greater empowerment of the subordinate group.
Chapter 4. Policing the Borders of Nation: The Imperial Gaze in Gender Persecution Cases (88-129)
Razack states that the guideline released by the Canadian Immigration and Refugee Board in 1993 that recognized domestic violence as a form of persecution and legalized petitions of asylum based on gender-related persecution is one of the most remarkable achievement in Canadian legal history and the first guideline in the world to address gender-related persecution.
As Razack argues, a problem with this asylum structure, , is sexism interlocked with colonialsim, that is, the West "knows what is best for the Other" (p. 92). Thus Razack argues that refugees are viewed to the West as a mess that the Third World created and that the West must clean up. Women seeking asylum are seen also within this context. Razack states:
The successful asylum seeker must cast herself as c cultural Other, that is, as someone fleeing from a more primitive culture. That is to say, it is through various orientalist and imperialist lenses that women's gender-based persecution becomes visible in the West. Without the imperial or colonial component, claims of gender persecution are less likely to succeed and asylum is denied. (pp. 92-93)
Razack criticizes that postcolonial discourse of cultural difference makes power relations invisible and keeps dominant cultural norms, white supremacy, in place by culturalizing social domination, in other words, replacing the domination of race, gender, and class with the language of culture. Thus, in the case of sexual violence involving Aboriginal women and immigrant women, both victims and attackers are often “culturalized, that is, understood as cultural and frozen in time, rather than as dynamic, historical, and social” (p. 19). Looking at sexual violence and the process of refugee determination, Razack asserts that women’s realities should be understood within the structures of patriarchy, capitalism, and white supremacy.
Chapter 3. What is to Be Gained by Looking White People in the Eye? Race in Sexual Violence Cases
Razack states that culture talk is a double-edged sword, as “it packages difference as inferiority and obscures both gender-based and racial domination, yet cultural considerations are important for contexualizing oppressed groups’ claims for justice, for improving their access to services, and for requiring dominant groups to examine the invisible cultural advantages they enjoy” (p. 58).
Problems, however, arise from the fact is culture is often uttered as an unchangeable set of values and customs autonomous from historical and social contexts. Razack writes, “culture is taken to mean values, beliefs, knowledge, and customs that exist in a timeless and unchangeable vacuum outside of patriarchy, racism, imperialism, and colonialism” (p. 58). Thus she calls attention to sexism interlocked with racism.
Razack contests that white society preempts racism and sexism by replacing the discoursesof racism and sexism with culture. Calling this process culturalization, Razack states:
In its modern form, overt racism, which rests on the notion of biologically based inferiority, coexists with a more covert practice of domination encoded in the assumption of cultural or acquired inferiority. This ‘culturalization of racism,’ whereby Black inferiority is attributed to ‘cultural deficiency, social inadequacy, and technological underdevelopment,’ thrives in a social climate that is officially pluralist. (p. 60)
Razack also points out the culturalization of sexism, writing that cultural consideration are used to defend male sexual violence offenders while also being used to intensify prejudices against minority, in particular Aboriginal, women. In this regard, Razack pays attention to the tendency that women of color distance themselves from the culturalization of violence, as seen in the statement, ‘No culture condones violence’ included in the report of the Coalition of Immigrant and Visible Minority Women of British Colombia.
Observing cross-cultural sensitivity training, Razack contests that such training is of little use unless it is pursued in the context of the greater empowerment of the subordinate group.
Chapter 4. Policing the Borders of Nation: The Imperial Gaze in Gender Persecution Cases (88-129)
Razack states that the guideline released by the Canadian Immigration and Refugee Board in 1993 that recognized domestic violence as a form of persecution and legalized petitions of asylum based on gender-related persecution is one of the most remarkable achievement in Canadian legal history and the first guideline in the world to address gender-related persecution.
As Razack argues, a problem with this asylum structure, , is sexism interlocked with colonialsim, that is, the West "knows what is best for the Other" (p. 92). Thus Razack argues that refugees are viewed to the West as a mess that the Third World created and that the West must clean up. Women seeking asylum are seen also within this context. Razack states:
The successful asylum seeker must cast herself as c cultural Other, that is, as someone fleeing from a more primitive culture. That is to say, it is through various orientalist and imperialist lenses that women's gender-based persecution becomes visible in the West. Without the imperial or colonial component, claims of gender persecution are less likely to succeed and asylum is denied. (pp. 92-93)
Friday, January 8, 2010
Post-Colonial Ruptures and Democratic Possibilities: Multiculturalism as Anti-Racist Pedagogy
Giroux, Henry. (1992). Cultural Critique, 21 (Spring), 5-39.
From the debate about education and democracy in the 1980s, Giroux deduces that culture is a terrain of political and ideological struggle. In particular, conservative attack on multiculturalism drew impact on social movement as well as education in general. Giroux states:
“What is being valorized in the dominant language of the conservative offensive is an undemocratic approach to social authority and a politically regressive moce to reconstruct American life within the script of Eurocentrism, racism, and patriarchy. Similarly, within these discourses, the call to define civilization as synonymous with selected aspects of Western tradition is being matched by a fervent attempt to reduce pedagogy to the old transmission model of teaching and learning.” (p. 5-6)
Giroux analyzes further the implications of conservative cultural offensive: in a larger social context, the conservative backlash was an attempt to dismantle/reverse the gains made by subordinate groups, such as gays and lesbians, women, racial minorities, etc. around a politics of identity. In higher education and public schooling, the attack was manifested against political correctness and multiculturalism. In the conservative view, multiculturalism provokes separatism, threatens western civilization and politicizes universities. D’Souza writes:
“Liberal arts students…are very likely to be exposed to an attempted brainwashing that deprecates Western learning and exalts a neo Marxist ideology promoted in the name of multiculturalism” (Illiberal Education, p. 35)
Conservative diatribes against multiculturalism were side by side with the attack on political correctness, which undermined multiculturalism. Giroux writes:
“The political correctness movement seizes upon the issue of free expression in order to undermine social criticism that opposes cultural chauvinism, racism, and gender discrimination. Political correctness is euphemism used by liberals and neoconservatives to disparage radical professors, cultural workers, and students from displaying ongoing pedagogical interests in fashioning a democratic culture within and outside of higher education. Accordingly, the rallying cry against political correctness is an act of bad faith designed to legitimate and enforce the pedagogical imperative to learn a selected cultural tradition and common culture invented in a monolithic and totalizing discourse.” (p. 10)
Giroux observes that common culture is a counter concept used by conservatives in attacking multiculturalism. Central to this concept is that the common culture of the United States is made up of diverse racial and ethnic groups. Giroux criticizes that this concept depoliticizes and dehistoricizes the idea of culture. In other words, common culture does not acknowledge inequality of power among social groups, the systematic maintenance of power domination, Eurocentric curriculum, social movement and struggle, etc. About this liberal notion of multiculturalism, Giroux critiques:
“Liberal notions of multiculturalism affirm difference within a politics of consensus that erases culture as a terrain of struggle constituted within asymmetrical relations of power, knowledge, and experience.” (p. 14)
Giroux states that, although liberal multiculturalism challenges totalizing and racist views of conservatives, it fails to question ways in which political and cultural authority is maintained in the academic canon and does not call attention to critical issues in forms of ‘domestic colonialism’ expressed in racial violence, unemployment among black and other minorities, etc.
Thus, Giroux observes that both liberal and conservative approaches to multiculturalism refuse to identify culture in the context of white supremacy and unequal power relations. He writes:
[C]onservative and liberal discourses that conflate multiculturalism with the imperatives of a ‘common culture’ generally suppress any attempts to call into question the norm of whiteness as a ethnic category that secures its dominance by appearing to be invisible. In this case, emancipatory interests in liberal approaches to multicultural education are generally limited to the call for either assimilation or the demand to reverse negative images of blacks and other ethnic groups as they appear in various forms of texts and images. (p. 15)
In sum, liberal multiculturalism fails to address post-colonial critiques. Calling urgent attention to constructing difference, Giroux seconds post-colonial approaches to democratic society. He explains post-colonial criticism as follows:
“Post-colonial discourses have pushed against the boundaries of the liberal and conservative debate on multiculturalism by asserting that politics and struggle are central to the discourse of difference.” (p. 18)
Post-colonialism emphasizes a politics of difference in contrast to a legacy of colonialism that veils specific forms of privilege. [Find a quote or two-Gayatri Spivak, Tiffin, Ngugi, Issac Julien, Kobena Mercer] About the central argument of post-colonialism, Giroux writes:
“At stake here is deconstructing forms of privilege that benefit males, whiteness, and property as well as those conditions that have disabled others to speak in places where those who are privileged by virtue of the legacy of colonial power assume authority and the conditions for human agency.” (p. 19)
“[Post-colonial discourses] provide a theoretical foundation for deconstructing the master narratives of white supremacist logic and redrawing the boundaries between the construction of experience and power…post-colonial criticism has illuminated how Eurocentric-American discourses of identity suppresses difference, heterogeneity, and multiplicity in their efforts to maintain racist hegemonic relations of power.”(p. 21)
Thus, Giroux sums that “Post-Colonial discourses represents a space in which to retheorize, locate, and address the possibilities for a new politics based on the construction of new identities, zones of cultural difference, and forms of ethical address.”(p. 22)
Within this context, Giroux calls for a border pedagogy to address power inscription in body, culture, space, history, land and psyche as a means of achieving anti-racist teaching.
From the debate about education and democracy in the 1980s, Giroux deduces that culture is a terrain of political and ideological struggle. In particular, conservative attack on multiculturalism drew impact on social movement as well as education in general. Giroux states:
“What is being valorized in the dominant language of the conservative offensive is an undemocratic approach to social authority and a politically regressive moce to reconstruct American life within the script of Eurocentrism, racism, and patriarchy. Similarly, within these discourses, the call to define civilization as synonymous with selected aspects of Western tradition is being matched by a fervent attempt to reduce pedagogy to the old transmission model of teaching and learning.” (p. 5-6)
Giroux analyzes further the implications of conservative cultural offensive: in a larger social context, the conservative backlash was an attempt to dismantle/reverse the gains made by subordinate groups, such as gays and lesbians, women, racial minorities, etc. around a politics of identity. In higher education and public schooling, the attack was manifested against political correctness and multiculturalism. In the conservative view, multiculturalism provokes separatism, threatens western civilization and politicizes universities. D’Souza writes:
“Liberal arts students…are very likely to be exposed to an attempted brainwashing that deprecates Western learning and exalts a neo Marxist ideology promoted in the name of multiculturalism” (Illiberal Education, p. 35)
Conservative diatribes against multiculturalism were side by side with the attack on political correctness, which undermined multiculturalism. Giroux writes:
“The political correctness movement seizes upon the issue of free expression in order to undermine social criticism that opposes cultural chauvinism, racism, and gender discrimination. Political correctness is euphemism used by liberals and neoconservatives to disparage radical professors, cultural workers, and students from displaying ongoing pedagogical interests in fashioning a democratic culture within and outside of higher education. Accordingly, the rallying cry against political correctness is an act of bad faith designed to legitimate and enforce the pedagogical imperative to learn a selected cultural tradition and common culture invented in a monolithic and totalizing discourse.” (p. 10)
Giroux observes that common culture is a counter concept used by conservatives in attacking multiculturalism. Central to this concept is that the common culture of the United States is made up of diverse racial and ethnic groups. Giroux criticizes that this concept depoliticizes and dehistoricizes the idea of culture. In other words, common culture does not acknowledge inequality of power among social groups, the systematic maintenance of power domination, Eurocentric curriculum, social movement and struggle, etc. About this liberal notion of multiculturalism, Giroux critiques:
“Liberal notions of multiculturalism affirm difference within a politics of consensus that erases culture as a terrain of struggle constituted within asymmetrical relations of power, knowledge, and experience.” (p. 14)
Giroux states that, although liberal multiculturalism challenges totalizing and racist views of conservatives, it fails to question ways in which political and cultural authority is maintained in the academic canon and does not call attention to critical issues in forms of ‘domestic colonialism’ expressed in racial violence, unemployment among black and other minorities, etc.
Thus, Giroux observes that both liberal and conservative approaches to multiculturalism refuse to identify culture in the context of white supremacy and unequal power relations. He writes:
[C]onservative and liberal discourses that conflate multiculturalism with the imperatives of a ‘common culture’ generally suppress any attempts to call into question the norm of whiteness as a ethnic category that secures its dominance by appearing to be invisible. In this case, emancipatory interests in liberal approaches to multicultural education are generally limited to the call for either assimilation or the demand to reverse negative images of blacks and other ethnic groups as they appear in various forms of texts and images. (p. 15)
In sum, liberal multiculturalism fails to address post-colonial critiques. Calling urgent attention to constructing difference, Giroux seconds post-colonial approaches to democratic society. He explains post-colonial criticism as follows:
“Post-colonial discourses have pushed against the boundaries of the liberal and conservative debate on multiculturalism by asserting that politics and struggle are central to the discourse of difference.” (p. 18)
Post-colonialism emphasizes a politics of difference in contrast to a legacy of colonialism that veils specific forms of privilege. [Find a quote or two-Gayatri Spivak, Tiffin, Ngugi, Issac Julien, Kobena Mercer] About the central argument of post-colonialism, Giroux writes:
“At stake here is deconstructing forms of privilege that benefit males, whiteness, and property as well as those conditions that have disabled others to speak in places where those who are privileged by virtue of the legacy of colonial power assume authority and the conditions for human agency.” (p. 19)
“[Post-colonial discourses] provide a theoretical foundation for deconstructing the master narratives of white supremacist logic and redrawing the boundaries between the construction of experience and power…post-colonial criticism has illuminated how Eurocentric-American discourses of identity suppresses difference, heterogeneity, and multiplicity in their efforts to maintain racist hegemonic relations of power.”(p. 21)
Thus, Giroux sums that “Post-Colonial discourses represents a space in which to retheorize, locate, and address the possibilities for a new politics based on the construction of new identities, zones of cultural difference, and forms of ethical address.”(p. 22)
Within this context, Giroux calls for a border pedagogy to address power inscription in body, culture, space, history, land and psyche as a means of achieving anti-racist teaching.
Saturday, April 25, 2009
A Pedagogy For Liberbation
Shor, Ira & Freire, Paulo. (1987). New York: Bergin & Garvey.
In their dialogue about liberating educators, Freire says, "To the extent I could prove to them that they could learn, when I challenged them, they felt more free" (p. 27). This means liberating educators are more demanding. This statement resonates with his perspective about learning: "Knowing demands discipline! Knowing which demands many things from you, which makes you tired in spite of being happy. It is not something which just happens" (p. 80). He demands intellectual responsibility from truly liberating teachers.
To Freire, liberating education requires transformation. He says, "[E]ducation per sé is not the lever of revolutionary transformation. The school system was created by political forces whose center of power is at a istance from the classroom. If education is not the lever of transformation, how can we understand liberating education? ... Liberatory education is fundamentally a situation where the teacher and the students both have to be learners, both have to be cognitive subjects, in spite of being different. This for me is the first test of liberating education, for teachers and students both to be critical agents in the act of learning" (p. 33).
Freire states that dialogical/democratic relationship between the educator and students do not make them equal. There is and should be difference. The central question for him is that whether the difference become 'antagonistic', which entails an authoritarian educator. At the same time, he stresses that students need to know their freedom that goes beyond the limits of democratic authority must be punished and the punishment has to be made by authority (p. 92-93). To him, democracy, freedom and authority are one entity.
Shor regards the 'culture of silence' as passive tolerance of domination, which has a aggressive dimension. He argues that aggression is inevitable because passivity is not a natural condition of childhood or adulthood and it is a response to symbolic violence imposed by the school through curriculum, punishments, manipulation, subordination, etc. He contends that this symbolic violence causes the culture of sabotage, which he calls 'performance strike', as a negative resistance, or falling into deeper silences. Aggressive students create disorder and alienate themselves from the school environment. Thus Shor calls for a counter-alienation pedagogy on the side of student subjectivity (pp. 123-125).
In their dialogue about liberating educators, Freire says, "To the extent I could prove to them that they could learn, when I challenged them, they felt more free" (p. 27). This means liberating educators are more demanding. This statement resonates with his perspective about learning: "Knowing demands discipline! Knowing which demands many things from you, which makes you tired in spite of being happy. It is not something which just happens" (p. 80). He demands intellectual responsibility from truly liberating teachers.
To Freire, liberating education requires transformation. He says, "[E]ducation per sé is not the lever of revolutionary transformation. The school system was created by political forces whose center of power is at a istance from the classroom. If education is not the lever of transformation, how can we understand liberating education? ... Liberatory education is fundamentally a situation where the teacher and the students both have to be learners, both have to be cognitive subjects, in spite of being different. This for me is the first test of liberating education, for teachers and students both to be critical agents in the act of learning" (p. 33).
Freire states that dialogical/democratic relationship between the educator and students do not make them equal. There is and should be difference. The central question for him is that whether the difference become 'antagonistic', which entails an authoritarian educator. At the same time, he stresses that students need to know their freedom that goes beyond the limits of democratic authority must be punished and the punishment has to be made by authority (p. 92-93). To him, democracy, freedom and authority are one entity.
Shor regards the 'culture of silence' as passive tolerance of domination, which has a aggressive dimension. He argues that aggression is inevitable because passivity is not a natural condition of childhood or adulthood and it is a response to symbolic violence imposed by the school through curriculum, punishments, manipulation, subordination, etc. He contends that this symbolic violence causes the culture of sabotage, which he calls 'performance strike', as a negative resistance, or falling into deeper silences. Aggressive students create disorder and alienate themselves from the school environment. Thus Shor calls for a counter-alienation pedagogy on the side of student subjectivity (pp. 123-125).
Friday, April 24, 2009
Cultural Reproduction and Social Reproduction
Bourdieu, Pierre. (1977). In J. Karabel & A. H. Halsey (Eds.), Power and Ideology in Education. pp. 487-511. New York: Oxford University Press. (Originally from Knowledge, Education and Cultural Change, R. Brown(Ed.), London: Tavistock, 1973)
Bourdieu reveals that the level of education plays the major role in cultural consumption, "legitimate" activities. He emphasizes, however, that the education can reach the full effectiveness among individuals who bring acquired culture and familiarity with the appreciation of art by their family upbringing. In short, the education system proportions academic success to the cultural capital. He further argues that the education system reinforce the initial inequality and contribute to reproduction of unequally distributed cultural capital among classes because it tends to transmit dominant culture, thus forming the monopoly of that culture. This[symbolic violence*] results in self-elimination of children from culturally unfavored classes in the form of self-depreciation, devaluation of the school, or a resigned attitude to failure and exclusion.
In terms of legitimizing the reproduction process, Bourdieu writes, "[B]y converting social hierarchies into academic hierarchies, the education system fulfills a function of legitimation which is more and more necessary to the perpetuation of the "social order" as the evolution of the power relationship between classes tends more completely to exclude the imposition of a hierarchy based upon the crude and ruthless affirmation of the power relationship" (p.498).
In his analysis about the relations between economic capital and cultural capital, he writes those who have less economic capital among the dominant classes invest more in education of their children so that they can at least maintain their social classes. His analysis about meritocratic ideology is sharp. He writes,
"the value of the diploma, outside the specifically academic market, depends on the economic and social values of the person who possesses it, inasmuch as the yield of academic capital (which is converted form of cultural capital) depends upon the economic and social capital which can be put to its valorization" (p. 506).
Thus, "the diploma is all the more indispensable for those from families less favoured in economic and social capital," however, "the possession of a diploma, as prestigious as it may be, is in any case less and less capable of guaranteeing access to the highest positions and is never sufficient to guarantee in itself access to economic power" (p. 507).
* The term of symbolic violence doesn't appear in this article. See in Bourdieu and Passeron, Reproduction in Education, Society, and Culture (1977).
Bourdieu reveals that the level of education plays the major role in cultural consumption, "legitimate" activities. He emphasizes, however, that the education can reach the full effectiveness among individuals who bring acquired culture and familiarity with the appreciation of art by their family upbringing. In short, the education system proportions academic success to the cultural capital. He further argues that the education system reinforce the initial inequality and contribute to reproduction of unequally distributed cultural capital among classes because it tends to transmit dominant culture, thus forming the monopoly of that culture. This[symbolic violence*] results in self-elimination of children from culturally unfavored classes in the form of self-depreciation, devaluation of the school, or a resigned attitude to failure and exclusion.
In terms of legitimizing the reproduction process, Bourdieu writes, "[B]y converting social hierarchies into academic hierarchies, the education system fulfills a function of legitimation which is more and more necessary to the perpetuation of the "social order" as the evolution of the power relationship between classes tends more completely to exclude the imposition of a hierarchy based upon the crude and ruthless affirmation of the power relationship" (p.498).
In his analysis about the relations between economic capital and cultural capital, he writes those who have less economic capital among the dominant classes invest more in education of their children so that they can at least maintain their social classes. His analysis about meritocratic ideology is sharp. He writes,
"the value of the diploma, outside the specifically academic market, depends on the economic and social values of the person who possesses it, inasmuch as the yield of academic capital (which is converted form of cultural capital) depends upon the economic and social capital which can be put to its valorization" (p. 506).
Thus, "the diploma is all the more indispensable for those from families less favoured in economic and social capital," however, "the possession of a diploma, as prestigious as it may be, is in any case less and less capable of guaranteeing access to the highest positions and is never sufficient to guarantee in itself access to economic power" (p. 507).
* The term of symbolic violence doesn't appear in this article. See in Bourdieu and Passeron, Reproduction in Education, Society, and Culture (1977).
Sunday, April 12, 2009
Redefining Multicultural Education
Ghosh, Ratna. (2002). (2nd Ed.). Scarborough, ON: Nelson Thomson Learning.
1. Multicultural Education (pp. 1-22)
Ghosh criticizes the liberal perspective of multicultural education in that it attempts to accommodate other ethnocultural groups within a dominant educational framework of a monocultural pedagogy. In lieu of ethnic cultures she stresses multicultural education should emphasize the politics of difference such that difference is considered a right, views and experiences of all students both dominant and minority are incorporated in class, and differential treatment of students with dissimilar experiences. Besides, Ghosh puts an emphasis on identity development as a critical element of multicultural education. The teacher's role is, she asserts, to create unity within the diversity by helping stuents interpret their multiple social relations that contribute their identity construction. By unity within diversity she means "to integrate a positive ethnic and gender identity at the individual level with a national Canadian identity" (p.8) and states that the success of multiculturalism depends on this ability. [Why identity construction is a critical part of multiculturalism and why towards a Canadian identification?]
Ghosh states that multicultural education also challenges objective universal knowledge and thus curricula, i.e. how are students with different backgrounds affected by the dominant curriculum? How can those students become active participants in learning process?
Radical theories focus on structural discrimination that originates from the view of homogeneous student population. Based on these theories, Ghosh stresses that class is the first factor of student's failure and seconds the argument that education reinforces class differences (p. 13, Berstein, 77; Bourdieu & Passeron, 77; Bowles & Gintis, 1976). Besides she notes that the structure and process of education classify students, thus dumping a large number of students into special-education classes or dropping out of school. The problem is not individuals but the school system to which many do not fit, she argues. Therefore she underlines that the goal of multicultural education at the institutional level is to provide an equal chance to all students to develop their full potential by offering different needs to different students.
3. A Framework for a Redefined Multicultural Education (p. 39-67)
"Besides being an act of knowing, education is alos a political act. That is why no pedagogy is neutral" (Shor & Freire, 1987, p. 13; as cited on p. 40).
Bourdieu (1979, Symbolic Power, Critique of Anthropology, 4, 77-85) refers the maintenance of dominant-group power both in school and in society as symbolic violence (as cited on p. 57). Ghosh argues that traditional pedagogy techniques and content make minority students feel unworthy and "culturally deprived" and lose selt-esteem. Noting an important role that schools play in constructing self-esteem, Ghosh proposes involvement of parents in school activities as a good way of developing positive self-concept. (p.57).
*Shor, I. & Freire, P. (1987). A pedagogy for liberation: Dialogues on transforming education. South Hadley, MA: Bergin & Garvey.
4. The School Environment (pp. 69-86)
Ghosh continues to criticize the exclusion of parents of ethnic/racial minority and working-class students from the educational environment. It is, Ghosh argues, because of "culturally embedded perceptions of and communication difficulties with school administration and teachers" (p. 74). Ghosh stresses that this communication gap, which is reiterated elsewhere in the book as an important issue in anti-racist education, should be bridged such that parents and school share a shared responsibility for education, for example, by seeking cultural and linguistic translators and the assistance from community leaders.
With regard to school discipline, Ghosh contests that the symbolic violence (Bourdieu & Passeron, 77) that results from a school environment of rules, test and punishment based on manipulation and subordination causes a "performance strike" (Shor & Freire, 1987, p. 127), and writes, "this takes the form of passivitiy and rebellion: refusing to perform and do homework, using bad labguages, missing classes, dropping our literally or figuratively (passivity), using drugs and alchol, and engaging in crime. Passivity is not a natural condition of childhood; it is proviked, and can produce aggression" (p. 79).
*Bourdieu, P. & Passeron, J.C. (1977). Reproduction in education, society, and culture. Beverly Hills. CA: Sage.
5. Teacher Education and Classroom Interactions (pp. 87-109)
Ghosh contests that pre-service teacher education in North America is far behind changing society in the multicultural environment, thus leaving most of multicultural education to individual teachers' ad hoc initiatives due to their situation or their own moral imperatives. Among several factors that influence this reluctance to change, Ghosh writes teacher themselves have tended to avoid discussing politically controvertial issues, which resulted in taking nonracist/nonsexist approach rather than anti-racist/anti-sexist strategy, and "neutralize inequality and mask unequal power relations" (p. 90).
Ghosh continues to argue that teachers who believe in transformative education dare not "rock the boat" for fear of losing their jobs and stresses that the system has little incentive for teacher to undertake changes (p. 92).
"Students come in as curious individuals. The manner in which traditional education tends to subdue and silence children is well documented" (Holt, 1982; Kozol, 1991; cited on pp. 102-103).
*Holt, J.C. (1982). How children fail. NY: Delta/Seymour Lawrence.
*Kozol, J. (1991). Savage inequlaities: Children in American Schools. NY: Crown Publications.
6. Teaching Strategies and Evaluation (pp. 111-125)
With regard to a neutral approach taken by teachers with concern of indoctrination, Ghosh stresses that teachers must address the fundamental values of justice, fairness and respect. Taking a neutral approach, in other words, avoiding discussion of racism and sexism, under the guise of avoiding indoctrination, she argues, is harmful and evasive becasue neither school nor society is neutral. She writes, "A 'neutral' approach is a stance that serves to perpetuate inequality. While the teacher must protect divergent views, teaching is designed to bring about certain outcomes. Tacism and sexism are wrong; to say so is not indoctrination" (p. 121).
1. Multicultural Education (pp. 1-22)
Ghosh criticizes the liberal perspective of multicultural education in that it attempts to accommodate other ethnocultural groups within a dominant educational framework of a monocultural pedagogy. In lieu of ethnic cultures she stresses multicultural education should emphasize the politics of difference such that difference is considered a right, views and experiences of all students both dominant and minority are incorporated in class, and differential treatment of students with dissimilar experiences. Besides, Ghosh puts an emphasis on identity development as a critical element of multicultural education. The teacher's role is, she asserts, to create unity within the diversity by helping stuents interpret their multiple social relations that contribute their identity construction. By unity within diversity she means "to integrate a positive ethnic and gender identity at the individual level with a national Canadian identity" (p.8) and states that the success of multiculturalism depends on this ability. [Why identity construction is a critical part of multiculturalism and why towards a Canadian identification?]
Ghosh states that multicultural education also challenges objective universal knowledge and thus curricula, i.e. how are students with different backgrounds affected by the dominant curriculum? How can those students become active participants in learning process?
Radical theories focus on structural discrimination that originates from the view of homogeneous student population. Based on these theories, Ghosh stresses that class is the first factor of student's failure and seconds the argument that education reinforces class differences (p. 13, Berstein, 77; Bourdieu & Passeron, 77; Bowles & Gintis, 1976). Besides she notes that the structure and process of education classify students, thus dumping a large number of students into special-education classes or dropping out of school. The problem is not individuals but the school system to which many do not fit, she argues. Therefore she underlines that the goal of multicultural education at the institutional level is to provide an equal chance to all students to develop their full potential by offering different needs to different students.
3. A Framework for a Redefined Multicultural Education (p. 39-67)
"Besides being an act of knowing, education is alos a political act. That is why no pedagogy is neutral" (Shor & Freire, 1987, p. 13; as cited on p. 40).
Bourdieu (1979, Symbolic Power, Critique of Anthropology, 4, 77-85) refers the maintenance of dominant-group power both in school and in society as symbolic violence (as cited on p. 57). Ghosh argues that traditional pedagogy techniques and content make minority students feel unworthy and "culturally deprived" and lose selt-esteem. Noting an important role that schools play in constructing self-esteem, Ghosh proposes involvement of parents in school activities as a good way of developing positive self-concept. (p.57).
*Shor, I. & Freire, P. (1987). A pedagogy for liberation: Dialogues on transforming education. South Hadley, MA: Bergin & Garvey.
4. The School Environment (pp. 69-86)
Ghosh continues to criticize the exclusion of parents of ethnic/racial minority and working-class students from the educational environment. It is, Ghosh argues, because of "culturally embedded perceptions of and communication difficulties with school administration and teachers" (p. 74). Ghosh stresses that this communication gap, which is reiterated elsewhere in the book as an important issue in anti-racist education, should be bridged such that parents and school share a shared responsibility for education, for example, by seeking cultural and linguistic translators and the assistance from community leaders.
With regard to school discipline, Ghosh contests that the symbolic violence (Bourdieu & Passeron, 77) that results from a school environment of rules, test and punishment based on manipulation and subordination causes a "performance strike" (Shor & Freire, 1987, p. 127), and writes, "this takes the form of passivitiy and rebellion: refusing to perform and do homework, using bad labguages, missing classes, dropping our literally or figuratively (passivity), using drugs and alchol, and engaging in crime. Passivity is not a natural condition of childhood; it is proviked, and can produce aggression" (p. 79).
*Bourdieu, P. & Passeron, J.C. (1977). Reproduction in education, society, and culture. Beverly Hills. CA: Sage.
5. Teacher Education and Classroom Interactions (pp. 87-109)
Ghosh contests that pre-service teacher education in North America is far behind changing society in the multicultural environment, thus leaving most of multicultural education to individual teachers' ad hoc initiatives due to their situation or their own moral imperatives. Among several factors that influence this reluctance to change, Ghosh writes teacher themselves have tended to avoid discussing politically controvertial issues, which resulted in taking nonracist/nonsexist approach rather than anti-racist/anti-sexist strategy, and "neutralize inequality and mask unequal power relations" (p. 90).
Ghosh continues to argue that teachers who believe in transformative education dare not "rock the boat" for fear of losing their jobs and stresses that the system has little incentive for teacher to undertake changes (p. 92).
"Students come in as curious individuals. The manner in which traditional education tends to subdue and silence children is well documented" (Holt, 1982; Kozol, 1991; cited on pp. 102-103).
*Holt, J.C. (1982). How children fail. NY: Delta/Seymour Lawrence.
*Kozol, J. (1991). Savage inequlaities: Children in American Schools. NY: Crown Publications.
6. Teaching Strategies and Evaluation (pp. 111-125)
With regard to a neutral approach taken by teachers with concern of indoctrination, Ghosh stresses that teachers must address the fundamental values of justice, fairness and respect. Taking a neutral approach, in other words, avoiding discussion of racism and sexism, under the guise of avoiding indoctrination, she argues, is harmful and evasive becasue neither school nor society is neutral. She writes, "A 'neutral' approach is a stance that serves to perpetuate inequality. While the teacher must protect divergent views, teaching is designed to bring about certain outcomes. Tacism and sexism are wrong; to say so is not indoctrination" (p. 121).
Tuesday, January 6, 2009
Twenties Century Political Theory: A Reader
Stephen Eric Bronner (Ed.). (2006). NY: Routledge
[Conservative Disposition]
What Is Liberal Education? (1959, 103-108)
(Leo Strauss: an exile from Nazi who left great influence on American political theory)
Democracy, which originally meant a universal aristocracy, is degraded to mass culture, which is lack of intellectual and moral efforts, in modern society, Strauss postulates. Thus, he stresses that this debased situation calls for liberal education so that it can establish an aristocracy within democratic mass society by connecting great minds transcended through great books. In short, "liberal education is liberation from vulgarity," he states. [Michael Oaskeshott defines conservatism as emotional resistance to change and the propensity to the familiar rather than the unknown in his essay, On Being Conservative (77-89). Strauss, in this light, shows a strong anxiety of the mass culture and nostalgic pride as the noble. From his perspective, mass culture is vulgarity and something that should be avoided.]
The Adversary Culture and the New Class (1987, 109-116)
(Norman Podhoretz: editor of Commentary, a leading conservative magazine)
In the sixties, a massive number of intellectuals formed the adversary culture and a "New Class" whose capital is education and technical expertise to the extent that they were regarded as the agents of revolution, in particular, from the perspective of neo-Marxists. Their demand of fair share of political power combined with the Black power constituted New Politics in the early 70s. As counterpart of this movement, neo-conservatism or neo-liberalism, which may be a proper label, surfaced up to advocate middle-class values and capitalism. These adversaries of the adversary culture, which ripened in the mid 70s, culminated with the election of Ragan in 1980. [This seemingly objective historical narrative is based on a strong conservative perspective in that adversary intellectual movements were still regarded as a contingent dissident event and social justice is completely ignored in the progress of the society. He wecomes back the middle-class values and counter-revolutionary movements.]
[Communitarianism and Culture]
The Search for the Great Community
(The Collected Worlds of John Dewey: Later Works, Volume 2:1925-27; Southern Illinois University Press, 1984)
Identifying democracy with the idea of the community life itself, Dewey urges people to purposefully participate in communal life with anticipation of its consequence. He embroiders some components of the community life as follows: "Interactions, transactions, occur de facto and the results of interdependence follow. But participation in activities and sharing in results are additive concerns. They demand communication as a prerequisite."
The Public and the Private Realm
(Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition, University of Chicago Press, 1958)
Arendt argues that pluralism, where multiple realms have distinctive functions and purposes and every human activity has its proper location in the world, has been dissolved in the modern age to the extent that the private and public realms are submerged in the sphere of the social and wealth became a public concern beyond manageable private ownership. From this perspective, she writes, "the greatest threat here, however, is not the abolition of private ownership of wealth but the abolition of private property in the sende of a tangible, worldly place of one's own." For her, the only thing that individuals own privately is his possession of a body, which Marx called "labor-power." [From the labor class perspective, the deprivation is true, but it is hardly arguable that gigantic wealth has reached beyond private ownership because wealth is accumulated in certain group of people and possessed privately, not as a public commodity.] Arendt also stresses that the destruction of private realm, where labor, bodily functions, were hidden from the public realm, caused the laborers to be segregated from the community like criminals under constant surveillance in the modern age, which is characterized as "socialization of man" by Marx. [There are certain notions parallel with Marxism in her political philosophy, but there is no single word of class in her text, and in addition, her stress on private ownership seems very vague in that what she emphasizes that should be owned privately.]
[Critical Theory]
The State of Contemporary Social Philosophy and the Tasks of an Institute for Social Research
(Max Horkheimer. in Between Philosophy and Social Science: Selected Early Writings. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1993)
While delineating problem of contemporary social philosophy, Horkheimer reviews that whereas Kant sees individuals, spontaneous egos, as agents to derive culture, Hegel asserts that objective spirit [Geist] realizes culture and is developed by dominant spirit in each epoch. Individuals, according to Hegel, partake only in the totality, which mostly is determined by state, therefore, they can attain consciousness of their freedom only through speculative thinking, in other words, social philosophy. Horkheimer stresses that through such philosophy human beings experience "transfiguration" that makes individual existence more meaningful--"supra-personal sphere" in his term. In this regard, Horkheimer denunciates Heidegger's emphasis on the interior of indivudual beings and human existence that discard social philosophy. Horkheimer's stree on social philosophy is summarized as interdisciplinary philosophical research cooperation toward the whole on the basis of empirical materials. He writes, "the universal and the particular, the theoretical conceptualization and individual existence, permeate each other."
State Capitalism: Its Possibilities and Limitations
(Frederick Pollock, in Critical Theory and Society: A Reader, Bronner. S, & Kellner, D (Eds.). NY: Routledge, 1989)
The Culture Industry Reconsidered
(Theodor W. Adorno, Translated by Anson F. Rabinbach, in New German Critique 6 (Fall 1975: pp. 12-19)
By industry Adorno means the standardization of things and the rationalization of distribution techniques. The culture industry that intentionally concentrates high and low arts, he states, makes consumers "an appendage of the machinery" through suppressing consciousness and forcing conformity. Once produced as commodoties, cultural entities are no longer commodities in his definition, because the interests the culture industry pursued are so ideologized to be free from the compulsion to sell. He further writes that the culture industry turns into public relations that manufactures "good will" and "a blissful life". To Adorno, the most destructive power of the culture industry is that it does not allow the masses to reflect its legitimation, thus stupefies the masses through "fleeting gratification" and oblige blind consensus to authority.
Liberation From the Affluent Society
(Herbert Marcuse, originally published as "Conclusion" in Counter-Revolution and Revolt. Boston: Beacon Press, 1972)
His particular interest lays in liberation from the affluent, advanced industrial society, which is characterized for development and satisfaction of material and cultural needs. Regarding the educational system as "political," he urges to generate the "instinctual need for a life without fear, without brutality and without stupidity," as exemplified in Hippies in the U.S., who refuse efficient and insane reasonableness. To him, education is also "therapy" in the sense of liberating man from a society that forces them to be transformed into a brute.
[Black Heritage]
Letter from Birmingham Jail (329-340)
(Martin Luther King, Jr., 1963, assassinated in 1968.)
"Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed."
"One has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws."
"South is a necessary phase of the transition from an obnoxious negative peace, in which the Negro passively accepted his unjust plight, to a substantive and positive peace, in which all men will respect the dignity and worth of human personality."
"Human progress never rolls in on wheels of inevitability."
The Ballot or the Bullet
(Malcolm X, Malcom X Speaks, George Breitman (Ed.). Pathfinder Press, 1989; 1925-1965, a founder of Black Nationalism)
He urges Black to expand the civil rights struggle to the level of human rights and take it to the UN.
Nihilism in Black America (349-355)
(Conel West, Race Matters, Boston: Beacon Press, 2001)
He asserts that the fundamental threat in Black America is nihilism, which signifies "the lived experience of coping with a life of horrifying meaninglessness, hopelessness and (most important) lovelessness. In other words, the Black community is sunken in psychological and existential depression with battered identity. This confronting historical reality has become much stronger and more rampant largely because of corporate market institutions, which targets bodily pleasure and endless consumption. He writes: "The eclipse of hope and collapse of meaning in much of black America is linked to the structural dynamics of corporate market institutions that affect all Americans. Under these circumstances black existential angst (anguish) derives from the lived exxperience of ontologial wounds and emotional scars inflicted by white supremacist beliefs and images oermeating U.S. society and culture." He stresses on a love ethic, initiated locally, at the center of a politics of conversion.
[Postmodern Perspectives]
The Postmodern Condition (399-400)
(Jean-François Lyotard. 1984. In The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge, Minneapolis: University of Minneapolis)
In describing the condition of knowledge in modern society as postmodern, Lyotard defines postmodernism as "incredulity toward metanarratives" in the extreme simplification. Born as a product of progress in sciences, the incredulity threatens metanarrative (grand narrative) philosophical foundation that legitimize knowledge, he argues. He sees that the society will be governed by a pragmatics of language particles, which are denotative, prescriptive and descriptive, while grandiosity of hero, dangers, voyages and goals are being lost. While looking for legitamacy of modern society, he casts doubt on Habermas' notion of consensus obtained through discussion and writes, "Such consensus does violence to the heterogeneity of language games. And inventions is always born of dissension. Postmodern knowledge is not simply a tool of the authorities; it refines our sensitivity to differences and reinforces our ability to tolerate the incommensurable. Its principle is not the expert's homology, but the inventor's paralogy."
[Others]
Patriotism and Cosmopolitanism
(Martha Nussbaum, For Love of Country: Debating the Limits of Patriotism, Joshua Cohen(Ed.). Boston: Beacon, 1996)
Refuting Richard Rorty's call for patriotism and national identity (NYTimes 13 Feb 1994), Nussbaum admonishes its closeness to jingoism--bellicose chauvinism--and advocates cosmopolitan education based on the Stoics' concept of world citizen (kosmou politês), which stresses the vivid illustration of the difference in education. Nussbaum, thus, proposes education should emphasize world citizenship, rather than democratic or national citizenship, even if the realization is not so certain in every level. She is not blind to the idealistic face of this education by expressing: "Becoming a citizen of the world is often a lonely business...[because] cosmopolitanism offers only reason and the love of humanity, which may seem at times less colorful than other sources of belongs." She urges one to get out of the cocoon of familiarity and comfort.
Democracy and Dictatorship (1910's, 177-181)
(Rosa Luxemburg)
"Freedom is always and exclusively freedom for the one who things differently."
Against Lenin-Trotsky's dogmatic and systematic socialism movement, Luxemburg advocates adaptation in the course of realizing socialism in the mists of future. In this process, democracy becomes an important political structure. Contesting their limited democracy--dictatorship of a few, Luxemburg proposes dictatorship of the class or the mass, where the mass can participate in the most active and unlimited way, forming public opinion and public life, and criticizes the constrainted democracy of soviets by writing: "with the repression of political life in the land as a whole, life inthe soviets must also become more and more crippled."
Introduction to The Second Sex (1952, 359-368)
(Simone de Beauvoir, in The Second Sex, trans. H.M. Parshley.)
She states that the division of the sexes is a biological, not historical, fact. Throughout the history, men have been subject while women remained as Others. With regard to the inequality, Simone de Beauvoir has written: "The drama of woman lies in this conflict between the fundamental aspiration of every subject (ego)--who always regards the self as the essential--and the compulsions of a situation in which she is the inessential. The ultimate goal she wants to achieve is individual liberty--not happiness--which constitutes the base of her arguments.
[Conservative Disposition]
What Is Liberal Education? (1959, 103-108)
(Leo Strauss: an exile from Nazi who left great influence on American political theory)
Democracy, which originally meant a universal aristocracy, is degraded to mass culture, which is lack of intellectual and moral efforts, in modern society, Strauss postulates. Thus, he stresses that this debased situation calls for liberal education so that it can establish an aristocracy within democratic mass society by connecting great minds transcended through great books. In short, "liberal education is liberation from vulgarity," he states. [Michael Oaskeshott defines conservatism as emotional resistance to change and the propensity to the familiar rather than the unknown in his essay, On Being Conservative (77-89). Strauss, in this light, shows a strong anxiety of the mass culture and nostalgic pride as the noble. From his perspective, mass culture is vulgarity and something that should be avoided.]
The Adversary Culture and the New Class (1987, 109-116)
(Norman Podhoretz: editor of Commentary, a leading conservative magazine)
In the sixties, a massive number of intellectuals formed the adversary culture and a "New Class" whose capital is education and technical expertise to the extent that they were regarded as the agents of revolution, in particular, from the perspective of neo-Marxists. Their demand of fair share of political power combined with the Black power constituted New Politics in the early 70s. As counterpart of this movement, neo-conservatism or neo-liberalism, which may be a proper label, surfaced up to advocate middle-class values and capitalism. These adversaries of the adversary culture, which ripened in the mid 70s, culminated with the election of Ragan in 1980. [This seemingly objective historical narrative is based on a strong conservative perspective in that adversary intellectual movements were still regarded as a contingent dissident event and social justice is completely ignored in the progress of the society. He wecomes back the middle-class values and counter-revolutionary movements.]
[Communitarianism and Culture]
The Search for the Great Community
(The Collected Worlds of John Dewey: Later Works, Volume 2:1925-27; Southern Illinois University Press, 1984)
Identifying democracy with the idea of the community life itself, Dewey urges people to purposefully participate in communal life with anticipation of its consequence. He embroiders some components of the community life as follows: "Interactions, transactions, occur de facto and the results of interdependence follow. But participation in activities and sharing in results are additive concerns. They demand communication as a prerequisite."
The Public and the Private Realm
(Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition, University of Chicago Press, 1958)
Arendt argues that pluralism, where multiple realms have distinctive functions and purposes and every human activity has its proper location in the world, has been dissolved in the modern age to the extent that the private and public realms are submerged in the sphere of the social and wealth became a public concern beyond manageable private ownership. From this perspective, she writes, "the greatest threat here, however, is not the abolition of private ownership of wealth but the abolition of private property in the sende of a tangible, worldly place of one's own." For her, the only thing that individuals own privately is his possession of a body, which Marx called "labor-power." [From the labor class perspective, the deprivation is true, but it is hardly arguable that gigantic wealth has reached beyond private ownership because wealth is accumulated in certain group of people and possessed privately, not as a public commodity.] Arendt also stresses that the destruction of private realm, where labor, bodily functions, were hidden from the public realm, caused the laborers to be segregated from the community like criminals under constant surveillance in the modern age, which is characterized as "socialization of man" by Marx. [There are certain notions parallel with Marxism in her political philosophy, but there is no single word of class in her text, and in addition, her stress on private ownership seems very vague in that what she emphasizes that should be owned privately.]
[Critical Theory]
The State of Contemporary Social Philosophy and the Tasks of an Institute for Social Research
(Max Horkheimer. in Between Philosophy and Social Science: Selected Early Writings. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1993)
While delineating problem of contemporary social philosophy, Horkheimer reviews that whereas Kant sees individuals, spontaneous egos, as agents to derive culture, Hegel asserts that objective spirit [Geist] realizes culture and is developed by dominant spirit in each epoch. Individuals, according to Hegel, partake only in the totality, which mostly is determined by state, therefore, they can attain consciousness of their freedom only through speculative thinking, in other words, social philosophy. Horkheimer stresses that through such philosophy human beings experience "transfiguration" that makes individual existence more meaningful--"supra-personal sphere" in his term. In this regard, Horkheimer denunciates Heidegger's emphasis on the interior of indivudual beings and human existence that discard social philosophy. Horkheimer's stree on social philosophy is summarized as interdisciplinary philosophical research cooperation toward the whole on the basis of empirical materials. He writes, "the universal and the particular, the theoretical conceptualization and individual existence, permeate each other."
State Capitalism: Its Possibilities and Limitations
(Frederick Pollock, in Critical Theory and Society: A Reader, Bronner. S, & Kellner, D (Eds.). NY: Routledge, 1989)
The Culture Industry Reconsidered
(Theodor W. Adorno, Translated by Anson F. Rabinbach, in New German Critique 6 (Fall 1975: pp. 12-19)
By industry Adorno means the standardization of things and the rationalization of distribution techniques. The culture industry that intentionally concentrates high and low arts, he states, makes consumers "an appendage of the machinery" through suppressing consciousness and forcing conformity. Once produced as commodoties, cultural entities are no longer commodities in his definition, because the interests the culture industry pursued are so ideologized to be free from the compulsion to sell. He further writes that the culture industry turns into public relations that manufactures "good will" and "a blissful life". To Adorno, the most destructive power of the culture industry is that it does not allow the masses to reflect its legitimation, thus stupefies the masses through "fleeting gratification" and oblige blind consensus to authority.
Liberation From the Affluent Society
(Herbert Marcuse, originally published as "Conclusion" in Counter-Revolution and Revolt. Boston: Beacon Press, 1972)
His particular interest lays in liberation from the affluent, advanced industrial society, which is characterized for development and satisfaction of material and cultural needs. Regarding the educational system as "political," he urges to generate the "instinctual need for a life without fear, without brutality and without stupidity," as exemplified in Hippies in the U.S., who refuse efficient and insane reasonableness. To him, education is also "therapy" in the sense of liberating man from a society that forces them to be transformed into a brute.
[Black Heritage]
Letter from Birmingham Jail (329-340)
(Martin Luther King, Jr., 1963, assassinated in 1968.)
"Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed."
"One has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws."
"South is a necessary phase of the transition from an obnoxious negative peace, in which the Negro passively accepted his unjust plight, to a substantive and positive peace, in which all men will respect the dignity and worth of human personality."
"Human progress never rolls in on wheels of inevitability."
The Ballot or the Bullet
(Malcolm X, Malcom X Speaks, George Breitman (Ed.). Pathfinder Press, 1989; 1925-1965, a founder of Black Nationalism)
He urges Black to expand the civil rights struggle to the level of human rights and take it to the UN.
Nihilism in Black America (349-355)
(Conel West, Race Matters, Boston: Beacon Press, 2001)
He asserts that the fundamental threat in Black America is nihilism, which signifies "the lived experience of coping with a life of horrifying meaninglessness, hopelessness and (most important) lovelessness. In other words, the Black community is sunken in psychological and existential depression with battered identity. This confronting historical reality has become much stronger and more rampant largely because of corporate market institutions, which targets bodily pleasure and endless consumption. He writes: "The eclipse of hope and collapse of meaning in much of black America is linked to the structural dynamics of corporate market institutions that affect all Americans. Under these circumstances black existential angst (anguish) derives from the lived exxperience of ontologial wounds and emotional scars inflicted by white supremacist beliefs and images oermeating U.S. society and culture." He stresses on a love ethic, initiated locally, at the center of a politics of conversion.
[Postmodern Perspectives]
The Postmodern Condition (399-400)
(Jean-François Lyotard. 1984. In The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge, Minneapolis: University of Minneapolis)
In describing the condition of knowledge in modern society as postmodern, Lyotard defines postmodernism as "incredulity toward metanarratives" in the extreme simplification. Born as a product of progress in sciences, the incredulity threatens metanarrative (grand narrative) philosophical foundation that legitimize knowledge, he argues. He sees that the society will be governed by a pragmatics of language particles, which are denotative, prescriptive and descriptive, while grandiosity of hero, dangers, voyages and goals are being lost. While looking for legitamacy of modern society, he casts doubt on Habermas' notion of consensus obtained through discussion and writes, "Such consensus does violence to the heterogeneity of language games. And inventions is always born of dissension. Postmodern knowledge is not simply a tool of the authorities; it refines our sensitivity to differences and reinforces our ability to tolerate the incommensurable. Its principle is not the expert's homology, but the inventor's paralogy."
[Others]
Patriotism and Cosmopolitanism
(Martha Nussbaum, For Love of Country: Debating the Limits of Patriotism, Joshua Cohen(Ed.). Boston: Beacon, 1996)
Refuting Richard Rorty's call for patriotism and national identity (NYTimes 13 Feb 1994), Nussbaum admonishes its closeness to jingoism--bellicose chauvinism--and advocates cosmopolitan education based on the Stoics' concept of world citizen (kosmou politês), which stresses the vivid illustration of the difference in education. Nussbaum, thus, proposes education should emphasize world citizenship, rather than democratic or national citizenship, even if the realization is not so certain in every level. She is not blind to the idealistic face of this education by expressing: "Becoming a citizen of the world is often a lonely business...[because] cosmopolitanism offers only reason and the love of humanity, which may seem at times less colorful than other sources of belongs." She urges one to get out of the cocoon of familiarity and comfort.
Democracy and Dictatorship (1910's, 177-181)
(Rosa Luxemburg)
"Freedom is always and exclusively freedom for the one who things differently."
Against Lenin-Trotsky's dogmatic and systematic socialism movement, Luxemburg advocates adaptation in the course of realizing socialism in the mists of future. In this process, democracy becomes an important political structure. Contesting their limited democracy--dictatorship of a few, Luxemburg proposes dictatorship of the class or the mass, where the mass can participate in the most active and unlimited way, forming public opinion and public life, and criticizes the constrainted democracy of soviets by writing: "with the repression of political life in the land as a whole, life inthe soviets must also become more and more crippled."
Introduction to The Second Sex (1952, 359-368)
(Simone de Beauvoir, in The Second Sex, trans. H.M. Parshley.)
She states that the division of the sexes is a biological, not historical, fact. Throughout the history, men have been subject while women remained as Others. With regard to the inequality, Simone de Beauvoir has written: "The drama of woman lies in this conflict between the fundamental aspiration of every subject (ego)--who always regards the self as the essential--and the compulsions of a situation in which she is the inessential. The ultimate goal she wants to achieve is individual liberty--not happiness--which constitutes the base of her arguments.
Thursday, October 30, 2008
White Teacher and Whilte Privilege
Vivian Parley. (2000). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Parley narrates her interactions with black kids in an integrated elementary school. She keeps child-oriented perspectives and respects the order of social/interpersonal structure that those children create, as Dewey emphasized. I also read Rousseau's approaches shown in Emile when she punishes Steven, an unruly child. She seemed to struggle not ignoring race issues and took a similar position to feminists--difference exists but it doesn't matter. In the end, she confesses that she was still looking at black kids collectively, which signifies that she is not close enough to see individual characteristics. This seems true when many tend to identify a student from Asia as an Asian girl, who has no name. What about the other way around? In higher education setting, there are more white people, so any colored students may stand out, so they may be easily identifiable with its race. But will they try to learn their names?
Peggy McIntosh. (1988).
McIntoch further advocates breaking silence, in particular, about white privilege. Silence and denial perpetuate the 'interlocking' oppressions resulting from race, sex, class, religion and ethnicity.
Parley narrates her interactions with black kids in an integrated elementary school. She keeps child-oriented perspectives and respects the order of social/interpersonal structure that those children create, as Dewey emphasized. I also read Rousseau's approaches shown in Emile when she punishes Steven, an unruly child. She seemed to struggle not ignoring race issues and took a similar position to feminists--difference exists but it doesn't matter. In the end, she confesses that she was still looking at black kids collectively, which signifies that she is not close enough to see individual characteristics. This seems true when many tend to identify a student from Asia as an Asian girl, who has no name. What about the other way around? In higher education setting, there are more white people, so any colored students may stand out, so they may be easily identifiable with its race. But will they try to learn their names?
Peggy McIntosh. (1988).
McIntoch further advocates breaking silence, in particular, about white privilege. Silence and denial perpetuate the 'interlocking' oppressions resulting from race, sex, class, religion and ethnicity.
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