Pedagogy of Resistance by Henry A. Giroux

Author:Henry A. Giroux [Giroux, Henry A.]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Published: 2022-03-23T18:30:00+00:00

Thinking the Unthinkable

What was once unthinkable is now said in public by demonstrators across the globe, such as those in the United States protesting police violence and the brutality of economic inequality. Young people are calling for a new narrative to repair the safety net, provide free healthcare, childcare, elder care, and free quality public schools for everyone. There are growing calls against state violence, and the plagues of poverty, homelessness, and the pollution of the planet. Young people, members of the millennial generation, and Gen Z ‘are refining the rhythm of resistance and solidarity, aligning their struggles at home with the fights against US empire in the streets of Palestine, Haiti, Colombia, and other countries’.14

What these international youth movements have made clear is that they are more than willing to fight against something sinister and horrifying happening to liberal democracies all over the globe. They are well aware that the global thrust towards democratization that emerged after the Second World War is giving way once again to authoritarian tyrannies. Moreover, these tyrannies pose a serious danger not only to economic and political rights but to the planet itself, as the environment which sustains life cannot endure much longer if the assaults and degradation continue. As alarming as the signs may be, the public cannot look away and allow the terrors of the unforeseen to be given free rein. Young people across the globe are increasingly joining social movements that not only support democratic socialism, but also refuse to allow the power of dreams and educated hope to turn into ashes.

The pandemic is a crisis that cannot be allowed to turn into a catastrophe in which all hope is lost. While this pandemic threatens democracy’s ability to breathe, it offers the possibility to rethink politics and the habits of critical education, human agency, and elements of social responsibility crucial to any viable notion of what life would be like in a democratic socialist society. And while the worse effects of the pandemic may be receding in the rich countries of the west, its most repressive elements ranging from the inequities in treatment of minorities of colour, its hollowing out of liberal arts programmes in higher education, and its relentless immersion in a culture of lies will continue.

Yet, it is important to remember that power is not entirely about domination and that amid the corpses produced by neoliberal capitalism and COVID-19, there are flashes of hope, a chance to move beyond contemporary resurgences of authoritarianism. Theorists such as Paulo Freire, Ernst Bloch, Hannah Arendt, Angela Y. Davis, James Baldwin, and Howard Zinn, among others, understood that such a politics is rooted in a pedagogy of hope, one that integrated a critical reading of the world with an attempt to put into practice modes of struggle based on the principles of social and economic equality and human freedom.

It is hard to imagine a more urgent moment for taking seriously ongoing attempts to make education a fundamental element of politics. At stake here

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