Political Science Pedagogy: A Critical, Radical And Utopian Perspective [1 ed.] 3030234894, 9783030234898, 9783030238315

Table of contents :
Preface......Page 7
Acknowledgements......Page 10
Contents......Page 13
Abbreviations......Page 14
1 Introduction: Political Science, Democratic Citizenship and the Displacement of Pedagogy......Page 15
Critical......Page 28
Radical......Page 30
Utopian......Page 31
Methodology......Page 34
2 Political Theory Pedagogy as Radical Practice......Page 40
Leo Strauss and the Re-discovery of Political Philosophy......Page 45
Sheldon S. Wolin and the Making of Political Theory......Page 51
Conclusion......Page 57
Introduction......Page 63
The Myth of Socrates......Page 65
Critique of Socrates and the Socratic Method......Page 68
Refutation of Objections......Page 77
Conclusion......Page 79
Introduction......Page 81
The Challenge......Page 83
Pedagogical Theory......Page 85
Pedagogy and Prison......Page 87
Field Trip to a Prison......Page 88
Prison Field Trip Reading Assignments......Page 90
Refutation of Objections......Page 91
Conclusion......Page 92
Introduction......Page 95
Frantz Fanon......Page 100
Universalism as Ideology......Page 101
Enter Fanon......Page 107
Violence......Page 108
Pedagogy as Ideology......Page 110
Subversive Pedagogy......Page 112
NFL Protest as Subversive Pedagogy......Page 114
Conclusion......Page 120
6 Teaching Political Theory ONLINE at a “Hispanic Serving Institution”......Page 123
Teaching Style......Page 128
Conclusion......Page 138
7 Paulo Freire on Pedagogy and Revolution......Page 141
Paulo Freire......Page 143
Neutrality as “Politics”......Page 145
Illiteracy......Page 152
Fundamental Inversion......Page 154
Pedagogy and Revolt......Page 157
Conclusion......Page 161
8 Conclusion: Silence, Voice and Political Resistance in the Classroom......Page 164
Transforming the Classroom......Page 173
Three Examples......Page 177
Conclusion......Page 180

Citation preview

CRITICAL POLITICAL THEORY AND RADICAL PRACTICE

POLITICAL SCIENCE PEDAGOGY A Critical, Radical and Utopian Perspective

William W. Sokoloff

Critical Political Theory and Radical Practice Series Editor Stephen Eric Bronner Department of Political Science Rutgers University New Brunswick, NJ, USA

The series introduces new authors, unorthodox themes, critical interpretations of the classics and salient works by older and more established thinkers. A new generation of academics is becoming engaged with immanent critique, interdisciplinary work, actual political problems, and more broadly the link between theory and practice. Each in this series will, after his or her fashion, explore the ways in which political theory can enrich our understanding of the arts and social sciences. Criminal justice, psychology, sociology, theater and a host of other disciplines come into play for a critical political theory. The series also opens new avenues by engaging alternative traditions, animal rights, Islamic politics, mass movements, sovereignty, and the institutional problems of power. Critical Political Theory and Radical Practice thus fills an important niche. Innovatively blending tradition and experimentation, this intellectual enterprise with a political intent hopes to help reinvigorate what is fast becoming a petrified field of study and to perhaps provide a bit of inspiration for future scholars and activists. More information about this series at http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/14938

William W. Sokoloff

Political Science Pedagogy A Critical, Radical and Utopian Perspective

William W. Sokoloff University of Texas Rio Grande Valley Edinburg, TX, USA

Critical Political Theory and Radical Practice ISBN 978-3-030-23489-8 ISBN 978-3-030-23831-5  (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-23831-5 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2020 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover illustration: Laurence Garçon/EyeEm This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

Dedicated to John Anson Warner, a great friend, mentor and teacher

Preface

I worked with non-traditional students for five years at a satellite campus of Chapman University College (CUC). Most of my students were in their thirties and they were going back to the university to earn a bachelor’s degree while juggling work and family obligations. They had high expectations of the instructors. The eighteen to twenty-two-yearolds I taught at other universities made modest demands on me. The CUC students were more demanding and expected me to teach them how to complete the assignments. They wanted me to be precise about my expectations. I had to model what I wanted them to do and I had to explain how to do it. When I was not clear, they were honest and told me. This caught me off guard. Up to this point in time, I had given little thought to teaching. When I taught, I prepped, I showed up, I gave a lecture, I answered a few questions, I held office hours and then I went home. After all, I had an M.A. and a Ph.D. in political science. I was a published scholar. I assumed that it was obvious what teaching meant. Adult and non-traditional students challenged me to be a better teacher. Through working with them, I learned my graduate education had left out something foundational, namely, basic reflection on pedagogy and the skill set needed for effective teaching. I had a limited set of activities (mostly based on lecture) that I believed constituted teaching. Up to this point in time, I did not read a single book on pedagogy. Why would I? No one else did, or so I thought. Nor did I encounter a single person at an academic conference and as a colleague who read anything vii

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on teaching and learning. This oversight, namely, the failure to reflect on teaching and learning, says a lot about the discipline of political science. This led me to write this book on political science pedagogy. Ultimately, I have my students at CUC to thank for helping me reinvent myself as an educator. They put me on a path that made me realize that I not only needed to reflect on teaching but that this experience and how I changed in response might be valuable to others. I decided to write a book on political science pedagogy to share what I have learned about teaching. I also wanted to reflect on the discipline of political science from the vantage point of pedagogy and democratic citizenship. My reading and research within and outside the discipline of political science confirmed my hunch. The field of political science has paid insufficient attention to classroom instruction.1 Originally, political science was a pedagogical practice that arose in response to the need for a broad form of citizenship training.2 I discovered that the operationalization of this imperative has little to do with democratic citizenship. When it does direct its attention to pedagogy, the field does so in ways that are narrow and perpetuate a status quo political orientation. This is no small matter. The discipline has not been effective for preparing students for democratic citizenship in the context of authoritarian neoliberalism. Reflecting on and rethinking the politics of pedagogy in the field of political science is the point of this book. My goal is to articulate a general theory of radical political theory pedagogy as the practice of equality. I want to reinvent political science pedagogy as a critical, radical and utopian practice. Political science pedagogy should play a bigger role in the struggle to make the world a better place. Because I try to formulate a critical position on the discipline at least as it pertains to pedagogy, this book is relevant for graduate students and junior faculty. I hope that others find it useful as well. Even though I am approaching political science pedagogy from the vantage point of a

1This has started to change as signaled in the creation in 2004 of the APSA Teaching and Learning conference. However, this problem requires a broader conversation and a wider variety of perspectives on pedagogy. 2According to Bernard Crick, “the discipline in general owes both its origins and its unique size primarily to the idea that there was need in American society for the direct teaching of the principles and the techniques of citizenship”; see Crick, The American Science of Politics: Its Origins and Conditions (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1959), p. xii.

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political theorist, I hope this book appeals to scholars in the discipline as a whole. I am certain that this book will not please everyone. If it makes scholars and educators more reflective about teaching, I would be pleased with this result. If it is true that, as Romand Coles states, “the hyperactivity and professionalization of much radical political theory and critical scholarship in many disciplines is becoming a vehicle for going nowhere,” I hope this book points the reader in some promising new directions for research and teaching.3 Learning hinges on the disruption of entrenched assumptions and seeing something familiar in a new way. This is what I try to do in this book. Edinburg, USA

William W. Sokoloff

3Romand Coles, Visionary Pragmatism: Radical and Ecological Democracy in Neoliberal Times (Durham: Duke University Press, 2016), p. 3.

Acknowledgements

I thank Clyde W. Barrow, Daniel Chomsky, Mark Kaswan, James Martel, William Niemi, Nancy Love, Stephen Eric Bronner, Claire SnyderHall, Bradley Macdonald, Jocelyn Boryczka, Kate Canada, Ruth Ann Ragland, Mònica Clua-Losada, Nicholas Kiersey, Francisco Guajardo, Erika Gonzalez, Jessica Lavariega Monforti, William Gordon, Daniel O’Connor, Roberto de Souza, Judith Grant, Laurie Dodge, Mary Caputi, Timothy W. Luke and Antonio Vázquez-Arroyo for conversations pertaining to this project and for comments on particular chapters. Special thanks go out to my research assistants Jason Stratton, Karina Guerrero, Alondra Martinez, Patricio Hernandez, Caitlin Alaniz and Jillian Glantz. Finally, I thank Nicholas Xenos, Roberto Alejandro, Patricia Jagentowicz Mills, James Der Derian, Andrew Parker and Thomas Dumm. There are others who influenced this project that I crossed paths with in the distant past or that I have never met. I thank Megan Degenhart for giving me a copy of bell hooks’ Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom. bell hooks’ work on education, race relations, patriarchy and masculinity encouraged me to rethink what it means to be an intellectual. Henry A. Giroux’s work on the intersections between pedagogy and utopian theorizing has been a source of inspiration for this project. Peter McLaren’s work influenced my attempt to articulate a critical, radical and utopian perspective on political science pedagogy. The impact of Jacques Rancière’s The Ignorant Schoolmaster is also xi

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particularly important. Finally, Romand Coles’s concept of game-transformative practices and Davina Cooper on everyday utopias has helped me rethink core assumptions about academic work and political practice. Several chapters of this project were presented at the American Political Science Association, Western Political Science Association, Southern Political Science Association, Caucus for a New Political Science 50th Anniversary Conference and APSA Teaching and Learning conferences. I thank the participants at these gatherings for helpful feedback and constructive criticism. I thank the Political Science Department for travel support as well as the Dean and Provost’s offices. I also acknowledge the support of Kristin Croyle, Jonikka Charlton, Ala Qubbaj and Marie Mora. I thank colleagues, friends and the students at Brandman University, California State University Long Beach, University of California Irvine, University of California Riverside, University of Southern California, Cerritos Community College, El Camino Community College and at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley. Many years ago, I was lucky to have taken several political science courses with John Anson Warner, a Lecturer at California State University, Long Beach. He was an extraordinary teacher and encouraged me to go to graduate school. I changed my major to political science as a result of his dynamic lectures and commitment to his students. Dr. Warner changed the course of my life and he put me on the path that made writing this book possible. I also thank Jacques Derrida and Étienne Balibar, both for their kindness and fearless commitment to critical and radical scholarship. I thank Stanley Gonzales in the Department of Criminal Justice at the University of Texas Pan American (now UTRGV) for assistance with the planning and logistics of the prison field trip. I also thank Warden Rios and his staff at Lopez State Jail for the opportunity to visit the correctional facility with my students as well as the fascinating tour. I thank Stephen Eric Bronner for supporting this project and agreeing to include it in his Critical Political Theory and Radical Practice series. He did a fine job in identifying readers to evaluate and offer peer review feedback on the manuscript. I hope Stephen sees the impact of our spirited conversations in the pages that follow. The editorial team at Palgrave was professional and helped to move this project forward. My special thanks go to Michelle Chen and John Stegner. I thank my parents William J. and Nadja P. Sokoloff. They have supported me for five decades and did everything they could to help me as

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS  

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I struggled in graduate school and as I tried to secure academic employment. They never questioned my commitment to be an intellectual. Finally, I thank my partner Kerry Daly Sokoloff, Frisco and Gus for their love, encouragement and support.

Contents

1 Introduction: Political Science, Democratic Citizenship and the Displacement of Pedagogy

1

2 Political Theory Pedagogy as Radical Practice

27

3 Against the Socratic Method

51

4 Teaching Political Theory at a Prison in South Texas

69

5 Frantz Fanon’s Subversive Pedagogy 83 6 Teaching Political Theory ONLINE at a “Hispanic Serving Institution”

111

7 Paulo Freire on Pedagogy and Revolution

129

8 Conclusion: Silence, Voice and Political Resistance in the Classroom

153

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Abbreviations

ADC  A Dying Colonialism, Frantz Fanon AF  Alienation and Freedom, Frantz Fanon BSWM  Black Skins White Masks, Frantz Fanon TAR  Toward the African Revolution, Frantz Fanon WE  The Wretched of the Earth, Frantz Fanon

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CHAPTER 1

Introduction: Political Science, Democratic Citizenship and the Displacement of Pedagogy

Abstract This chapter examines the relationship between political science, pedagogy and democratic citizenship. Scholars in the field of political science have struggled to grasp and articulate this relationship. I try to explain why. I also present some of the dominant perspectives on the relationship between pedagogy and democratic citizenship (e.g. liberal, conservative, cosmopolitan and activist). Finally, I outline a critical, radical and utopian perspective on political science pedagogy and democratic citizenship as an alternative to standard ways of construing this relationship. My goal is to disrupt the authority, hierarchy and knowledge nexus and articulate a general theory of radical political theory pedagogy as the practice of equality.

Like many other political scientists, I am interested in the relationship between democracy and education. Unlike mainstream political scientists, I interrogate pedagogy to reflect on political science as a disciplinary practice, prospects for democratic citizenship and to expand our sense of political possibility. The history of political science pedagogy is a history of neglect of sustained reflection on teaching and learning.1 It is also a history of confu1 Consider the following quote: “Historically, as indicated by the documentary record of APSA presidential addresses, APSA council and committee minutes and reports, and APSAsponsored journal articles, there has been very little concern about teaching in political

© The Author(s) 2020 W. W. Sokoloff, Political Science Pedagogy, Critical Political Theory and Radical Practice, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-23831-5_1

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sion between conflicting goals, namely, the education and reproduction of ruling elites, the education of working people for democratic citizenship, building a common culture through education as a form of social glue, assimilating new individuals into the body politic and the democratization of colleges and universities.2 These competing goals signal important shifts in society that impact political science as a discipline. Macro-political and economic issues, competing pedagogical practices, political activism on university campuses and the internal politics of the discipline itself are also in play. In my review of the literature pertaining to the emergence of political science as a discipline, a common theme stands out. The more intensely political scientists pursued science as a way to achieve disciplinary status, power and societal legitimacy, the further removed from pedagogy and politics they became. Because of this quest for power, political science as science becomes increasingly obsessed with itself (e.g. searching for greater methodological precision) so as to preserve its epistemological authority. This quest displaces both politics and pedagogy. In this sense, political science as a disciplinary practice obscures as much as it clarifies.3 The more intensely it yearns for unmediated access to political reality via methodology, the further removed it becomes from understanding anything at all. Confusion between conflicting and contradictory pedagogical goals is one problem. The perils involved with the pursuit of a science of politics is another. There are other anomalies pertaining to political science as a discipline. In the words of a prominent commentator, “one of the most salient characteristics of many political scientists is that they are not interested in politics.”4 At both conferences and in dominant journals, the discipline positions itself as a conservative force and defines out of existence scholars

science.” See John Ishiyama, Marijke Breuning, and Linda Lopez, “A Century of Continuity and (Little) Change in the Undergraduate Political Science Curriculum,” American Political Science Review 100 (November 2006): 660. 2 See Pierre Bourdieu and Jean-Claude Passeron, Reproduction in Education, Society and Culture, trans. Richard Nice (London, UK: Sage, 1977/2000). 3 I thank Kate Canada for a conversation pertaining to these issues. 4 Alan Bloom, “Political Science and the Undergraduate,” in Teaching Political Science:

The Professor and the Polity, ed. Vernon Van Dyke (1977), p. 120. Raymond Seidelman flags the “increasing insulation of political science from the realities of politics, power and protest in twentieth-century America,” in Disenchanted Realists: Political Science and the American Crisis, 1884–1984 (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1985), p. xix.

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who contest how the discipline has come to be defined and practiced.5 Whether this is the result of the “tendency to triviality” and the “methodological evasion of the political,” one of the least controversial gatherings on the planet may turn out to be, oddly enough, a political science conference.6 The British historian Alfred Cobban claimed that political science is a device for avoiding politics without achieving science.7 Nearly sixty years later, publications in the dominant journals and what passes as sound political science confirm Cobban’s perspective. My goal in this book is to place contention and controversy at the center of political science through critical reflection on the politics of pedagogy. Exactly what I mean by the politics of pedagogy unfolds throughout this book. Ultimately, this book is about thoughtful revolutionary possibilities opened up by radical egalitarianism and how a lot of what is called political science blocks and displaces this democratic project. To be more specific, I argue for a politically engaged form of political science and pedagogy that is critical, radical and utopian. My goal is to re-politicize political science via radical pedagogy. In this regard, this book is grounded on radical egalitarianism, critically interrogating knowledge and truth claims, and practicing a bottom-up perspective that empowers groups that have been historically marginalized in the political realm (e.g. poor people; women; people of 5 For an analysis of the discontent that lead to a call for a new mode of political science see Clyde W. Barrow, “The Intellectual Origins of New Political Science,” New Political Science: A Journal of Politics and Culture 30 (2008): 215–244. See also An End to Political Science: The Caucus Papers, eds. Marvin Surkin and Alan Wolfe (New York: Basic Books, 1970). For a more recent rebellion in political science see Perestroika! The Raucous Rebellion in Political Science, ed. Kristin Renwick Monroe (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005). 6 See Bernard Crick, The American Science of Politics: Its Origins and Conditions (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1964), p. 173; Benjamin Barber, “The Politics of Political Science: ‘Value Free’ Theory and the Wolin-Strauss Dust-Up of 1963,” American Political Science Review 100 (November 2006): 541. According to Ollman, “political science is governed by five myths: (1) that it studies politics; (2) that it is scientific; (3) that it is possible to study politics separated off from economics, sociology, psychology and history; (4) that the state in our democratic capitalist society is politically neutral, i.e. available as a set of institutions and mechanisms to whatever group wins the election; and (5) that political science, as a discipline, advances the cause of democracy.” See Bertell Ollman, “What Is Political Science? What Should It Be?” New Political Science 22:4 (2000): 553–562. 7 For Alfred A. Cobban, “The political scientist, in so far as he wishes to remain a scientist, is limited to the study of techniques. A good deal of what is called political science, I must confess, seems to me a device invented by academic persons for avoiding that dangerous subject politics, without achieving science.” See Alfred A. Cobban, In Search of Humanity: The Role of the Enlightenment in Modern History (New York: G. Braziller, 1960), p. 240.

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color; sexual and gender minorities). To this end, I affirm the unconditional openness of Walt Whitman: I will not have a single person slighted or left away, The kept-woman, a sponger, thief, are hereby invited, The heavy-lipp’d slave is invited, the venerealee is invited; There shall be no difference between them and the rest.8

For Whitman, all people are invited irrespective of social condition, past errors and previous condition of servitude: “There shall be no difference between them and the rest.” He makes “appointments with all.” It is “for the wicked just the same as the righteous.” As I shall demonstrate, the door to political science has not been open to everyone. This book is my attempt to open political science pedagogy to a more expansive, inclusive and utopian future. Political scientists are committed to democracy and to educating the public. After all, democracy and education are reciprocally reinforcing practices.9 The quality of the former depends on the quantity of the latter. An education can turn a self-absorbed private person into a democratic citizen capable of recognizing and fighting for the public good. It is common to hear political scientists talk about the educational role of the discipline in abstract and conventional terms. These conversation, however, usually do not include radical perspectives on pedagogy.10 The limitations of a narrow

8 Walt Whitman, “Leaves of Grass (1891–92),” in Walt Whitman: Complete Poetry and Collected Prose (New York: Library of America, 1982), p. 205. 9 For Dana Villa, “the importance of an informed citizenry to the success of democracy is one of the most hackneyed of clichés. That does not prevent it from being true”; see Dana Villa, Teachers of the People: Political Education in Rousseau, Hegel, Tocqueville and Mill (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2017), p. 18. 10 An exception to this is Peter Bachrach and Douglas Bennett’s “Education in Political Commitments,” in Teaching Political Science: The Professor and the Polity, ed. Vernon Van Dyke (Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press, 1977). They state their chief concern as teachers is to “help students formulate and develop their own [the student’s] political commitments” (p. 37). See also Benjamin Barber, An Aristocracy of Everyone: The Politics of Education and the Future of America (New York: Basic Books, 1992). J. Peter Euben, Corrupting Youth: Political Education, Democratic Culture and Political Theory (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997). Debating Moral Education: Rethinking the Role of the Modern University, eds. Elizabeth Kiss and J. Peter Euben (Durham: Duke University Press, 2010). Another excellent example is Ange-Marie Hancock, Solidarity Politics for Millennials: A Guide to Ending the Oppression Olympics (New York: Palgrave, 2011).

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and conventional approach to pedagogy are compounded by the fact that “contemporary academic culture is not merely indifferent to teaching,” as Benjamin Barber claims, “it is actively hostile to it.”11 Allow me to refer to some examples and conceptions of pedagogy in the field that illustrate the aforementioned problems. Stephen T. Leonard’s “The Pedagogical Purposes of Political Science” is an insightful attempt to chart the educational role of political science and democratic citizenship but it also contains a number of blind spots.12 Written from a descriptivehistorical perspective, Leonard outlines the pedagogical missions of political science but he does so in an entirely uncritical manner. He focuses on the various aims of pedagogy (e.g. civic education; the training civil servants; and the reproduction of scholars) as opposed to asking the broader philosophical questions pertaining to pedagogy itself. Under what conditions does learning take place? How does one best educate another human being? How do pedagogical practices connect to the broader political and economic context? Whose voices are part of the conversation on pedagogy? Leonard’s piece provides useful information about competing perspectives pertaining to pedagogy but the neglect of these broader philosophical questions gives it a narrow focus.13 This diminishes its significance for critical reflection on the interrelationship between democratic citizenship and pedagogy. A general theory of radical political theory pedagogy is needed today. One that views pedagogy as the premier site for the production of skeptical, innovative activist and intellectual citizens. Another example that avoids these broader questions and explicitly opposes the radical egalitarianism I applaud in Walt Whitman is Alan Bloom’s The Closing of the American Mind, a book that promulgates an elitist mode of pedagogy and seeks to protect the university as a space for white male privilege. Specifically, the goal of this text is to decry the advances made by women and ethnic minorities on university campuses in

11 See Benjamin Barber, An Aristocracy of Everyone (1992), p. 196. 12 See Stephen T. Leonard, in Political Science in History: Research Programs and Political

Traditions, eds. James Farr, John S. Dryzek, and Stephen T. Leonard (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995). 13 Stephen T. Leonard’s historical account turn into a pessimistic one. He argues that “civic education will fit only with great difficulty into a culture where institutional, departmental, and individual self-promotion define academic success, honor, and recognition”; Stephen T. Leonard, “‘Pure Futility and Waste’: Academic Political Science and Civic Education,” PS: Political Science and Politics 32 (December 1999): 752.

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terms of changes to the curriculum (e.g. feminism, multiculturalism) and to make the case for a return to the era of excellence and high standards (e.g. the 1950s) where universities cultivated the classically educated gentleman. As Bloom puts it, his text is a “meditation on the state of our souls,” a rejection of relativism which “undermines education,” and a defense of the authoritative teacher of “Great Books” as a way to ask the “permanent questions.” Bloom seeks to snuff out feminism, the “enemy of the vitality of classic texts.” He seeks to return us to the glorious age of the 1950s, a time when a limited range of perspectives (e.g. European; white; male) constituted the university curriculum.14 For him, the 1960s ruined everything. It is surprising that such an anti-democratic statement on pedagogy and citizenship would gain such a foothold in the U.S. and become a best seller. Another conservative statement on citizenship and pedagogy is The Learning of Liberty: The Educational Ideas of the American Founders.15 In tracing the development of varying educational philosophies that influenced the American founders, the authors claim that the crisis in education today results from relativistic openness, a lack of moral grounding, and a debunking of our own system.16 For them, what we need instead is an appreciation of “Great Books” that awaken an anti-utopian awareness of the “essential limitations on what may be expected from political life or action.”17 Just like Bloom, they also construe education as the cultivation of reverence for the American system, soul-craft, the discovery of a priori foundations and a return to the laws of nature.18 Cloaked with the rhetoric of erudition, a dogmatic authoritarianism lurks in this perspective. Pedagogy emerges as a clerical imperative and the celebration of the political and economic status quo. The student memorizes what they are supposed

14 Alan Bloom, The Closing of the American Mind: How Higher Education Has Failed Democracy and Impoverished the Souls of Today’s Students (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1987)‚ pp. 15, 34, 65, 252, 322. 15 Lorraine Smith Pangle and Thomas L. Pangle, The Learning of Liberty: The Educational Ideas of the American Founders (Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 1993). 16 Pangle and Pangle, p. 287. 17 Pangle and Pangle, pp. 50–51. 18 For another conservative statement, see William J. Bennett, Our Children and Our Coun-

try: Improving America’s Schools and Affirming the Common Culture (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1988). See also Teaching in An Age of Ideology, eds. John von Heyking and Lee Trepanier (Lanham: Lexington Books, 2013).

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to know about the “American dream” and the triumph of the West so they become worthy of an “A” grade and salvation. The liberal model of teaching, learning and citizenship is also an official ideology of the political and economic status quo. It shares some but not all of the goals and pedagogical practices of the fundamentalist approach flagged above (e.g. need for political common ground/American creed as a source of unity and stability; defense of private property; constitutionalism; and rule by elites/experts in a watered down version of representative democracy).19 Originally, classical liberal thought was a form of radical dissent theory grounded on the right to resist illegitimate usurpations of power. It provided the philosophical principles that undermined the caste system of the ancien régime. Over time, liberal theory became a defense of private property and formal legal procedures for the resolution of conflict. For liberals, the state is neutral and promotes equality. Rights serve as protections against excessive state power. Liberal political education is minimalist (e.g. basic knowledge of how a bill becomes a law). Within the framework of this liberal democratic system, public schools teach tolerance and “help us negotiate our differences in the name of forging a public life.”20 As critics have pointed out, liberalism lacks a robust theory of citizenship and suffers from delusions of grandeur and historical amnesia.21 The politics and content of liberal pedagogy is narrow and teaches students the appropriate stance (e.g. acritical adoration) on free markets, private property and representative democracy. Ignored is the historical record in terms 19 See Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., The Disuniting of America: Reflections on a Multicultural Society, (New York: W. W. Norton, 1998). Schlesinger seeks “unifying ideals and a common culture” (p. 24) and opposes the “cult of ethnicity.” See also E. D. Hirsch, Jr., Cultural Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1987). For a more critical narrative, see Domenico Losurdo, Liberalism: A Counter-History, trans. Gregory Elliot (New York: Verso, 2014). 20 Stephen Macedo, Diversity and Distrust: Civic Education in a Multicultural Democracy, (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2000), p. 6. 21 See Charles Mills W. Mills, Black Rights/White Wrongs: A Critique of Racial Liberalism (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017). For Arthur Schlesinger, “the West has conceived and acted upon ideals that expose and combat its own misdeeds. No other culture has built self-criticism into the very fabric of its being.” There is something oxymoronic and delusional about congratulating oneself for being a part of a culture that is the most self-critical. See Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., The Disuniting of America: Reflections on a Multicultural Society (New York: W. W. Norton, 1998), p. 132. See, finally, William J. Bennett, Our Children and Our Country (1988), p. 198.

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of the treatment of marginalized groups (e.g. people of color; poor people; women; immigrants; and other minorities) and the impact of countless “exclusion clauses” in the definition and practice of citizenship. Liberal cosmopolitanism offers another important perspective on pedagogy and citizenship. This view advocates a form of “world citizenship” where we achieve a “sophisticated grasp of human variety” and broaden our perspective but nonetheless find common ground in core political principles and the primacy of reason.22 Martha Nussbaum has emerged as one of the leading proponents of this position. She argues that a “world identity” is better than one rooted in a “racially based group identity.”23 For Nussbaum, we must seek mutual understanding via tolerance and a broad form of open-mindedness: “The cosmopolitan puts right before country and universal reason before the symbols of national belonging.”24 Much to its credit, this position prevents excessive patriotism and extreme forms of group identity. However, liberal cosmopolitanism is not as open to otherness as the label implies. Liberal cosmopolitanism contains difference via defensive gestures that perpetuate a static conception of reason and the West. Nussbaum states that students “must learn enough about the different to recognize common aims, aspirations, and values.”25 As such, learning about different cultures is ultimately a homogenizing gesture to recognize what we all have in common as opposed to genuinely learning about what is different. Because of this, Nussbaum inadvertently promulgates a neocolonial discourse that comes close to the form of patriotism she criticizes. As Romand Coles aptly puts it: “Nussbaum acknowledges that colonialism has influenced knowledge in the past, but her texts exhibit virtually no attention to the ways colonialism may still be at work in her own project.”26 The last perspective on pedagogy and citizenship is activist. It stresses the value of active political engagement as a form of ongoing learning (e.g. service learning), criticizes narrow rights based models of citizenship and 22 Martha C. Nussbaum, Cultivating Humanity: A Classical Defense of Reform in Liberal Education (Harvard: Harvard University Press, 1997), p. 62. 23 See Martha C. Nussbaum, Cultivating Humanity (1997), p. 168. 24 See Martha C. Nussbaum, For Love of Country, ed. Joshua Cohen (Boston: Beacon Press,

2002), p. 17. 25 Martha C. Nussbaum (2002), p. 9. 26 Romand Coles, Beyond Gated Politics: Reflections for the Possibility of Democracy (Min-

neapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2005), p. 63.

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it seeks to preserve, perpetuate and encourage widespread participatory democracy.27 The Greek polis, republican Rome, town hall meetings and Soviet council system are frequent reference points. Social movements are its life-blood. Political engagement by active citizens is its spirit. Political participation is both an end in itself and a means to make the world a better place. Civic deliberation and service learning are pedagogical practices that promote political engagement as a way of life. Even though this perspective is the closest to my own, the drawback of this perspective is that it lacks a sufficiently critical, radical and utopian perspective on pedagogy. The descriptive-historical, fundamentalist/conservative, liberal, cosmopolitan and activist approaches constitute the horizon of political science pedagogy and citizenship today. In what follows, I draw on what I think are the best aspects of these approaches and articulate an alternative viewpoint that is critical, radical and utopian in order to stimulate a broader conversation on pedagogy. My critical and radical orientation to political science pedagogy is dialectical, develops forms of “everyday utopianism,” and views conflict as a prerequisite for a vibrant democratic life.28 I assume knowledge is never completely isolated from questions of power. These genealogical and deconstructive components, as well as what I call critical intersectionality, distinguish my position from all of the other ones. This more self-consciously critical, radical and utopian perspective on pedagogy and citizenship is, generally speaking, nowhere to be found in the discipline of political science. Ultimately, my goal is to develop a general theory of radical political theory pedagogy as the practice of equality. The difficulty finding critical, radical and utopian research on political science pedagogy is not surprising given that, as Judith Grant argues, the discipline of political science is defined in an exclusionary and highly politi-

27 See Experiencing Citizenship: Concepts and Models for Service-Learning in Political Science, eds. Richard M Battistoni and William E. Hudson (Washington, DC: American Association for Higher Education, 1997). See also Benjamin Barber, An Aristocracy of Everyone: The Politics of Education and the Future of America (New York: Ballantine Books, 1992). 28 I try to provide this perspective by drawing on interdisciplinary research, my experience as a student in public schools and universities, my experience working with non-traditional students in community colleges and at CUC, working with students in the CSU and UC systems, working at a “Hispanic Serving Institution” in south Texas and reading innovative scholarship. For “everyday utopianism” see Davina Cooper, Everyday Utopias: The Conceptual Life of Promising Spaces (Durham: Duke University Press, 2014). See also Romand Coles, Visionary Pragmatism (2016). See, finally, Jane Bennett, The Enchantment of Modern Life: Attachments, Crossings, and Ethics (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001).

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cized manner. For Grant, political scientists are “insufficiently reflective about the politics of the discipline itself.”29 Indeed, the discipline arguably excludes modes of inquiry that do not conform to widely accepted grounding assumptions for the discipline. This plays itself out in terms of who succeeds in the discipline and what students are taught about politics.30 According to a 2011 Task Force report on the discipline of political science, for example, introductory textbooks in American government and politics “often employ the institutional and/or behavioral approach and lack diversity in their texts and images. They examine institutions and processes from a majority white perspective.”31 Definitions of disciplines in terms of curriculum requirements and dominant methodology reflect whose ideas will win and how the discipline positions itself to the larger society. As Timothy W. Luke puts it, “American political scientists remain among the most recalcitrant disbelievers in the notion that disciplines serve as political structures interconnecting larger systems of political economy and the academic production of disciplinary knowledge.”32 This blind spot is reproduced (via evasion) by excessively methodological training in graduate programs (where critical modes of theory are not required in the curriculum) as well as by insufficient attention to politics of the discipline.33 A more self-consciously critical turn is necessary.34 29 Judith Grant, “Forget the APSR: The Politics of Political Science,” New Political Science

33 (March 2011): 87, 89. 30 Meta Mendel-Reyes argues that “the academy’s claim to disinterestedness disguises the actual role played by most political scientists in articulating and helping to sustain conventional relations of power”; in Experiencing Citizenship: Concepts and Models for Service-Learning in Political Science, eds. Richard M. Battistoni and William E. Hudson, (Washington, DC: American Association for Higher Education, 1997), p. 17. 31 See “Political Science in the 21st Century: Report of the Task Force on Political Science in the 21st Century,” American Political Science Association (2011): 37. 32 Timothy W. Luke, “Caught Between Confused Critics and Careerist Co-Conspirators: Perestroika in American Political Science,” in Perestroika! ed. Kristen Renwick Monroe (2005), p. 476. 33 The University of Iowa, for example, does not require political theory in the training of graduate students. According to its website, “Graduate students can choose from five fields of study: American Politics, International Politics, Comparative Politics, Formal Theory, and Research Methods.” See https://clas.uiowa.edu/polisci/graduate/political-sciencephd-and-ma. 34 See, for example, Rogers M. Smith, “The Puzzling Place of Race in American Political Science, PS: Political Science and Politics (January 2004): 45. See also Jessica Lavariega

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Perhaps what I am saying is an exaggeration and the tide is already beginning to change in the direction of a more reflective, politically self-conscious and critically oriented form of political science and pedagogy.35 Also, given the epistemological diversity in terms of approach (e.g. historical; empirical; theoretical; critical; sociological; Marxist; post-modern; post-behavioral; post-positivist; feminist; intersectional; queer, etc.), and growing interest in teaching political science, perhaps what I am saying about the discipline is wrong and more applicable to a bygone age.36 Indeed, many political scientists conduct research on teaching and learning and the results appear in the Journal of Political Science Education (JPSE) and “The Teacher” in PS: Political Science and Politics (PS). A lot of the work published in JPSE and PS is interesting. I have participated and presented at the “Teaching and Learning” conference hosted by APSA on several occasions. I benefited from the lively discussions and dedication to teaching evident in all participants at this conference. Nevertheless, a lot of this mainstream research on teaching reinforces and replicates at least some of the uncritical and arguably conservative assumptions of the discipline and does not include critical, radical and explicitly utopian perspectives. This is especially the case

Monforti and Adam McGlynn, “Aquí Estamos? A Survey of Latino Portrayal in Introductory U.S. Government and Politics Textbooks,” PS: Political Science and Politics (2010). See also Sherri L. Wallace and Marcus D. Allen, “Survey of African American Portrayal in Introductory Textbooks in American Government/Politics: A Report on the APSA Standing Committee on the Status of Blacks in the Profession,” PS: Political Science and Politics (2008). Jessica Blatt claims “race thinking shaped U.S. political science at its origins far more profoundly than has previously been recognized.” See Jessica Blatt, Race and the Making of American Political Science (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2018), p. 4. 35 See Jenny Kehl, “Indicators of the Increase of Political Science Scholarship on Teaching and Learning in Political Science,” PS: Political Science and Politics (June 2002). For Kehl, “The Scholarship of Teaching and Learning is gaining increased recognition, interest, and support” (p. 232). 36 For an account of the epistemological diversity within the discipline of political science see Keith Topper, The Disorder of Political Inquiry (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2005).

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in JPSE.37 Critically oriented voices are usually not part of the conversation on political science pedagogy in this journal. The exclusion of critical, radical and utopian perspectives on political science pedagogy plays itself out in publications on teaching and learning and unfortunately becomes a self-perpetuating circle. The questions raised by one scholar, as well as what is regarded as the relevant literature, serve in turn to condition what passes as appropriate research on teaching and learning in the next study. It is entirely possible under these conditions to fail as a scholar. One could “publish and perish if the publishing is not done in the right journals, with the right publishers and to universally laudatory reviews.”38 The reader may wonder, once again, whether I am overstating my case. Anticipating this, I conducted key word searches in PS and JPSE on radical pedagogy. I also scoured the table of contents of every issue of JPSE. Nothing comes up that grapples with radical and utopian pedagogy. Critical modes of pedagogy inspired by Paulo Freire, Henry A. Giroux, bell hooks, Jacques Rancière and others constitute some of the most provocative research on pedagogy. To learn about this radical and utopian pedagogy, though, you would have to leave the discipline of political science. To compound the problem created by the neglect and marginalization of critical and radical approaches to political science pedagogy, minimal attention is given to teaching as part of graduate education in political science. According to Anna Sampaio, “very few graduate students or junior faculty receive any instruction on how to instruct.”39 A 2004 APSA Task Force on graduate education included a brief blurb on teaching in its report and hailed the benefits of graduate students working as a teaching assistant (TA)

37 Consider the conclusion reached by Stephen G. Hartlaub and Frank A. Lancaster’s national survey on pedagogy. “The most important factor in how we teach is our own choices, and it seems that faculty in all institutions make a wide variety of pedagogical choices”; Hartlaub and Lancaster, “Teacher Characteristics and Pedagogy in Political Science,” Journal of Political Science Education 4 (2008): 387. This conclusion avoids the ways in which disciplinary norms and graduate school training impact the choices faculty make about how to teach, what to teach and what to say about it. An exception to this surface level analysis can be found in Amy Cabrera Rasmussen’s “Toward an Intersectional Political Science Pedagogy,” Journal of Political Science Education 10 (2014): 102–116. 38 See Seidelman, Disenchanted Realists (1985)‚ p. 226. 39 Anna Sampaio, “Women of Color Teaching Political Science: Examining the Intersections

of Race, Gender, and Course Material in the Classroom,” PS: Political Science and Politics (October 2006): 917.

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and research assistant (RA) with experienced undergraduate teachers. This is a great point but it begs the question of how one becomes a good teacher to begin with. The report largely restricted its statements to the importance of serving as a RA and TA and said nothing about the importance of doing research on teaching political science.40 Many years ago, I served as a TA for faculty teaching large sections of introductory U.S. government courses. I sat in on an instructor’s class and took notes while she lectured. I led discussion sections pertaining to course material. As I look back on this experience, my time serving as a TA was the dominant form of learning about teaching I received. This was a standard practice at other Ph.D. granting institutions too, as I have heard anecdotally from friends and colleagues in the discipline. According to Albert Somit and Joseph Tanenhaus, “graduate programs paid little attention to the fledgling Ph.D. as prospective teacher. Since the great majority of new doctorates went into academic life, they were admirably unprepared for the pedagogical duties promptly thrust upon them.”41 It is important to note that Somit and Tanenhaus are making this claim in reference to U.S. political science Ph.D. programs in the 1880–1903 period. Their claim, I fear, is still accurate today, over a hundred years later. If graduate school insufficiently prepares Ph.D. candidates to teach, the process for getting tenure, as Benjamin Barber puts it, “marginalizes teaching.”42 By implication, conducting research on teaching would guarantee denial of tenure. Given that almost all individuals in the U.S. are required to take some form of civics and political science course during their secondary and postsecondary educational experience, the problem and political stakes involved with political science pedagogy and democratic citizenship make it a worthy topic of a book length study. Educational institutions specialize in the production of subjectivity. At least theoretically, students enter the institution with a certain set of views and beliefs and exit it as a new person. Universities are one of the few places where critical, skeptical and reflective citizens can be cultivated. It is comparatively one of the “most free spaces

40 See “2004 Report to the Council: APSA Task Force on Graduate Education,” in Perestroika! (2005). 41 See Albert Somit and Joseph Tanenhaus, The Development of American Political Science: From Burgess to Behavioralism (Boston, MA: Allyn and Bacon, 1967). 42 Benjamin Barber, An Aristocracy of Everyone, p. 196.

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in our polity.”43 It is time to exploit this freedom in new ways. This is what my general theory of radical political theory pedagogy tries to do. The goal is to open minds, recreate a sense of political possibility, counter the cynicism of social conservatism and hopelessness of recent forms of apocalyptic Leftism and reinvent the discipline of political science. My commitment to critical, radical and utopian pedagogy springs from my hope in the possibility of a better future. Practices in the classroom can have a ripple effect and transform the world in egalitarian directions. However, the current political situation is daunting. Budget cuts to higher education, the appointment of billionaire Betsy DeVos to head the U.S. Department of Education and another conservative appointment to the U.S. Supreme Court squash hope in the possibility of positive political change. We are swimming in racist, anti-immigrant, hyper-masculinist and authoritarian rhetoric and practices. Every day, we seem to be moving further and further to the Right. In this context, working people and especially our students face a grim reality. Their prospects for finding good employment and living meaningful lives are in jeopardy. The role of educators (especially political scientists) in this context should be to ensure that students are acquiring the critical abilities needed to understand the connection between their lives and the broader political-economic context.44 This is why my approach to pedagogy is critical, radical and utopian. A general theory of radical political theory pedagogy as the practice of equality expands the political imagination.

Critical By critical I am not referring to some sort of compulsive and incessant complaining, mean-spiritedness and pointless hair-splitting. Rather, by critical I am referring to the political and moral imperative to expose the limits of practices we take as given and natural. We need to employ a variety of perspectives (not just a Eurocentric one) to gain critical distance from current social, economic and political arrangements. The goal is to expose what 43 Romand Coles, “Transforming the Game: Democratizing the Publicness of Higher Education and Commonwealth in Neoliberal Times,” New Political Science: A Journal of Politics and Culture (2014): 628. The university is both the propaganda machine for capitalism and liberal democracy as well as the site that can contest these hegemonic narratives. 44 See Peter McLaren, Life in Schools: An Introduction to Critical Pedagogy in the Foundations of Education (Boston: Pearson Education, 2007).

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blocks the educational egalitarianism and forms of citizenship needed for a vibrant democracy. As Michelle Fine and Lois Weiss put it, we need to “deconstruct those policies and practices that have historically encoded power, privilege, and marginality in our public schools.”45 Critique is important because it can prevent hubris, cruelty and violence and help us understand what is standing in the way of human flourishing. Being critical also refers to the need to call things by their proper names. As Michelle Fine and Lois Weiss put it, “naming involves those practices that facilitate critical conversations about social and economic arrangements, particularly about inequitable distributions of power and resources.”46 In societies where billionaires rule and saturate the political arena with their money, it is a stretch (if not an outright lie) to refer to them as republics and democracies. When words change their meanings to accommodate those in power, critique must expose the power play. Critique can also do more. According to Keith Topper, the critical project helps us “overcome false beliefs, misunderstandings, self-defeating practices, oppressive social arrangements, asymmetrical relations of power, and crippling ideological distortions, all of which intensify human misery and social injustice while diminishing human dignity.”47 I am aware that critique can lead to unproductive pessimism, relativism, skepticism and despair. Hence, an explicitly utopian dimension (more on this in a moment) must work in tandem with it. Nevertheless, critique, genealogy and deconstruction are good because they illuminate the historical conditions connected to dominant views and practices. Specifically, they expose the limits of these social and political practices. Critique also allows us to reflect on what we are doing and potentially stops us from being unjust. Critique can make us humble, cautious, and sensitive. As Socrates teaches, a life lived without a critical dimension makes self-improvement impossible.

45 See Beyond Silenced Voices: Class, Race, and Gender in United States Schools, eds. Lois Weiss and Michelle Fine (Albany: State University of New York, 1993), p. 1. 46 See Michelle Fine and Lois Weiss, Silenced Voices and Extraordinary Conversations: ReImagining Schools (New York: Teachers College Press, 2003), pp. 18–19. See also Benjamin Barber: “When values have been named, issues identified, agendas set, and options delineated, most of what is meaningful in politics has already taken place,” in Barber, Strong Democracy: Participatory Politics for a New Age (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984), p. 157. 47 Keith Topper, The Disorder of Political Inquiry (2005), p. 110.

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The questions that are essential in this regard are simple: What role has the educational sphere played in a historically racist, patriarchal and capitalist society characterized by entrenched privilege and inequality?48 Why are students often passive and silent in the classroom?49 By asking these questions and providing this more self-consciously critical and macro approach to the politics of pedagogy, vistas can be opened for new modes of thought and action, new types of research on pedagogy can emerge and a broader conversation about the prospects for thoughtful social and political transformation can take place. As Stephen Gilbert Brown aptly puts it, “pedagogy among the oppressed is not about the transmission of knowledge; it is about the transference of power.”50 This point is especially pertinent for young people and students at public institutions of higher learning. They face challenges in terms of spiking tuition, the skyrocketing cost of living, stagnating wages, crippling debt, negative encounters with authority figures (e.g. police; teachers) and increasingly grim prospects to eke out more than a life of subsistence earning and dead end part-time employment in the new gig economy. Given the seismic shifts in the economy, growing inequality and limited social mobility, students need to acquire the conceptual apparatus to make sense of the relationship between their lives and the broader socio-economicpolitical context.51 The point of this is not to engage in indoctrination but to expand the political horizons of students beyond mainstream perspectives so they are able to engage in intelligent modes of political struggle based on an honest assessment of what is happening. This begins with the cultivation of the critical faculties through readings, discussions, assignments and activities that put into question the myths of the political and economic status quo. 48 See Craig Steven Wilder, Ebony and Ivy: Race, Slavery and the Troubled History of America’s Universities (New York: Bloomsbury Press, 2013); see also Jerome Karabel, Chosen: The Hidden History of Admission and Exclusion at Harvard, Yale and Princeton (New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2005). 49 Consider the following quote: “Despite years of consistent research on the efficacy of pedagogies that engage students, a glance into many classrooms will find faculty members lecturing.” See Paul L. Gaston et al., General Education & Liberal Learning: Principles of Effective Practice (Washington, DC: Association of American Colleges and Universities, 2010), p. 42. 50 Stephen Gilbert Brown, Words in the Wilderness: Critical Literacy in the Borderlands (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2000), p. 216. 51 See Henry A. Giroux, Neoliberalism’s War on Higher Education (Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2014).

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Radical By the term radical, I am not referring to some form of political extremism and belligerent activism. Rather, I am referring to the political and moral imperative to investigate and interrogate (e.g. get to the root) unexamined guiding assumptions/grounds/foundations. Structural analysis can fruitfully illuminate the patriarchal, racist, colonial, heteronormative and class biases that have constituted the “hidden curriculum” in political science.52 Liberal versus conservative does not constitute a real choice when it comes to pedagogy. Both are uncritical and anti-utopian perspectives that mystify power relationships and trap us in the cyber-cage of the present. My hope is that radical forms of inquiry will expose the contingent character of social and political arrangements assumed to be natural and inevitable. Everything can be otherwise than it is. The point is to expand our political horizons beyond the parameters of the status quo in order to inspire hope and optimism. Radical analysis is the precondition for new forms of research, thought and political struggle. Hence, it is important to challenge the assumptions of the present. We must think outside of the dominant frames of reference (e.g. liberal, conservative, cosmopolitan and activist) because these perspectives limit the political imagination. Beyond all of this, radical means promoting structural change that undermines various forms of domination and allows for human flourishing for all people, not only for the non-working 1%.

Utopian Radical and critical modes of inquiry clear the ground and open spaces for thought but they require a hopeful and utopian disposition. This simply means that we need to set our sights high, avoid cynicism, despair and pessimism and embrace utopian thinking. Based on my experience in the

52 For the expression “hidden curriculum,” see Ivan Illich, Deschooling Society (New York: Harper & Row, 1970). See also Michael Apple, Ideology and Curriculum (New York: Routledge, 1990). The hidden curriculum “refers to the unwritten, unofficial, and often unintended lessons, values, and perspectives that students learn in school. While the ‘formal’ curriculum consists of the courses, lessons, and learning activities students participate in, as well as the knowledge and skills educators intentionally teach to students, the hidden curriculum consists of the unspoken or implicit academic, social, and cultural messages that are communicated to students while they are in school.” See https://www.edglossary.org/hiddencurriculum/, accessed on July 12, 2018.

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field of political science, the word utopian is not fashionable. It is met with claims that this is not what we do, that utopian aspirations are misguided, a waste of time, irrelevant, dangerous (e.g. leading to totalitarianism) and they are a form of empty dreaming better left to individuals in insane asylums and comparative literature departments. The anti-utopian chorus has deep roots dating back to Aristotle’s rejection of Plato’s ideal city and continues today in the apocalyptic leftism of Giorgio Agamben and Wendy Brown.53 Beyond the rejection of utopian theorizing by these authors, the discipline of political science screams its rejection of utopian thinking at a deafening level.54 For Judith Shklar, “‘utopia’ and ‘utopian’ have come to mean mostly a project that is not just a fantasy but also one that will end in ruin.”55 Why has “utopian” come to mean these things? Are there other meanings, uses and value to the word utopian? I believe that there are. I defend utopian political science pedagogy as a way of going against the grain and stimulating the political imagination. For me, utopian means doing something now not just dreaming about it. I draw on the innovative work of Davina Cooper on “everyday utopias” to demonstrate the crucial role a utopian disposition plays in the classroom and in the struggle for a better world.56 Please allow me to be more specific about the word utopian. I do not mean the search for a perfect society. I am not promoting a situation where everyone joins hands and sings songs around a campfire. I am not looking for a conflict free “Garden of Eden.” I employ the word utopian to flag the need to explore the possibility of a new future. This new future requires fighting for a democratic public sphere, accountability to the people, substantive equality, meaningful work, the abolition of prisons, the protection of our environment, universal health care, guaranteed housing, the end of imperialism, quality education for all and putting an end to the war machine. Engaging in utopian practice and thinking is not, to

53 For anti-utopian theorizing see Giorgio Agamben, Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life, trans. Daniel Heller-Roazen (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998). See also Wendy Brown, Undoing the Demos: Neoliberalism’s Stealth Revolution (New York: Zone Books, 2015). 54 See William Galston, The Practice of Liberal Pluralism (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004). 55 Judith N. Shklar, Political Thought and Political Thinkers, ed. Stanley Hoffman (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998), p. 176. 56 See Davina Cooper, Everyday Utopias (2014).

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use Judith Schklar’s words, “an improbable scheme of salvation-throughschooling.”57 Rather, it is a call to experiment and innovate beyond the current horizon of cruelty intrinsic to neoliberal authoritarian politics, socialism for the non-working rich and transfer of wealth upward via theft of public funds and tax breaks for billionaires. Arguing about competing forms of utopian visions expands the political imagination. It also adds stimulating controversy to the classroom.58 For Mark Coté, Richard J. F. Day, and Greig de Peuter, utopian simply means “a critical attitude towards the present and a political commitment to experiment in transfiguring the coordinates of our historical moment.”59 Utopian pedagogy is thus a subversive form of pedagogy that aims to achieve the impossible (a never completed and ongoing endeavor). As Stephen Eric Bronner suggests, “the invocation of utopia makes us realize that what we have is not necessarily what we want and what we want is not necessarily all we can have.”60 Foregrounding the utopian dimension essential to pedagogy is my way to further the project of thoughtful social and political transformation. As Benjamin Barber puts it, “the aspiration to democratic education requires an often utopian, sometimes foolish, always risky faith in the human capacity for change.”61 Utopian aspirations will inevitably lead to some experiences of loss and failure. Far from taking the steam out of a utopian sensibility, failure and loss comprise valuable moments of learning and can inspire us to innovate and press on. That is to say, failure is an opportunity to grapple with the 57 Judith Shklar, Redeeming American Political Thought, eds. Stanley Hoffman and Dennis F. Thompson (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998), p. 78. See also Shklar, After Utopia: The Decline of Political Faith (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1957). 58 As a point of contrast, the American Sociological Association’s theme for its 2012 annual meeting was “Real Utopias: Emancipatory Projects, Institutional Designs, Possible Futures.” According to the program, “a great deal of scholarship focuses on explaining the sources of social injustice and the causes and consequences of undesirable social conditions; much less explores the design of alternatives to existing institutions that would help realize moral ideals of justice and human flourishing. The idea of ‘real utopias’ is meant to point sociology in this direction.” See “A Sketch of the Real Utopias Theme for the 2012 ASA Meetings,” American Sociological Association, (p. 1). 59 See Utopian Pedagogy: Radical Experiments Against Neoliberal Globalization, eds. Mark Coté, Richard J. F. Day, and Greig de Peuter (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2007), p. 13. 60 Stephen Eric Bronner, The Bitter Taste of Hope: Ideals, Ideologies, and Interests in the Age of Obama (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2017), p. 12. 61 Barber, An Aristocracy of Everyone (1992), p. 266.

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distance between theory and practice in ways that open up new vectors for thought and action. Failure can also lead to learning what tactics must be changed, which aspects of neoliberalism must be co-opted and used against neoliberalism, when it is time to play by the rules and when one must engage in “game transformative practices.”62 That is to say, it is important to recognize when it is necessary to alter the terrain and invent new forms of political struggle.

Methodology A book grounded on a critical, radical and utopian practical and theoretical commitment requires a unique approach and methodology. The one employed in this book is autobiographical, qualitative, quantitative and theoretical. I draw upon my own experiences as a student in primary and secondary public schools. I draw on my experience teaching at community colleges, state schools, research universities and private colleges. I also draw upon my experience and training as a political scientist with a specialization in political theory. Finally, I draw on my experience working with my students on community engagement and service-learning projects. The questions I am attempting to answer are simple: How can we best educate the increasingly diverse students we encounter in the classroom and make political science more relevant to their lives?63 How can pedagogical practices play a role in the creation of a better and more just world? To answer these questions, the chapters in this book are theoretical and practical. I bring different discourses and perspectives into conversation. My goal is to articulate an anti-Straussian and non-mainstream perspective on political science pedagogy via a critical, radical and utopian approach. This emerges as a general theory of radical political theory pedagogy that shatters the authority, hierarchy and knowledge nexus and transforms pedagogy into the practice of equality. The chapters in this book do not constitute a linear narrative but raise a constellation of themes that all come back to the question of political science pedagogy and the importance of seeing something familiar in a new 62 Romand Coles, Visionary Pragmatism (2016), p. 196. 63 According to J. Wesley Leckrone, “a major cause of students’ disinterest in politics is

its perceived irrelevance to their daily lives.” See “Hippies, Feminists, and Neocons: Using The Big Lebowski to Find the Political in the Nonpolitical,” PS: Political Science and Politics (January 2013): 130.

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way. It is this concern that comprises the coherence of the book. The more theoretical chapters (Introduction, 2, 3, 5, 7) have practical relevance. The more practical chapters (4, 6, Conclusion) also engage broader theoretical issues. The chapters contest static and fixed assumptions pertaining to pedagogy. The goal is to open up vectors for creativity, improvisation and alternative ways of thinking. I seek to shatter the connection between authority, hierarchy and knowledge perpetuated by the medieval vision of the teacher and university. The authority, hierarchy and knowledge nexus silences students, entrenches inequality and perpetuates the privilege of political and economic elites and their offspring. Radical political theory pedagogy is the practice of equality and freedom for everyone, not just for the privileged. If a particular chapter does not interest you, kindly skip it and move on to the next. In Chapter 2, “Political Theory Pedagogy as Radical Practice,” I challenge a grounding assumption in political theory, namely, the so-called divide between Sheldon S. Wolin and Leo Strauss. I demonstrate that Wolin and Strauss not only share similar visions of the practice of political theory but both have blocked the type of critical reflection on pedagogy I advance in this book. In the case of Strauss, one finds a defense of natural law (permanent and trans-historical).64 The form of pedagogy peddled by Strauss and his followers emerges as elitist, anti-democratic and anti-utopian. A strange mix of paranoia and hatred of the demos, Strauss’s celebration of the Western tradition is ultimately a defense of the privilege of the current reigning political and economic elite and the need to protect them from democratic challenge. Pedagogically, Strauss seeks to cultivate intellectual aristocrats. Common people are incapable of obtaining and even recognizing a quality education. The erudition provided by the Western tradition provides the foil for Strauss’s elitist political agenda. Wolin also brings us to a dead-end in terms of radical pedagogy. In my view, political theory is not a body of knowledge with a relatively fixed set of concerns (as Wolin stipulates) but is something that changes over time and is open to infinite reinvention. Wolin’s reverence for the tradition nullifies this open-ended and radical aspect. The teacher is not an authoritative dispenser of knowledge (as Wolin stipulates) but a provocateur for critical thinking. Ultimately, this chapter puts into question the authority, hierarchy and knowledge nexus in their work in order to open a new horizon 64 See Leo Strauss, Natural Right and History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1965).

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for student voice and learning. The goal is to articulate a general theory of radical political theory pedagogy as the practice of equality. This is my alternative to the Wolin and Strauss version of pedagogy. Chapter 3, “Against the Socratic Method,” is a critique of Socrates and explores the often over-looked connections between politics and pedagogy. Specifically, I argue that the Socratic Method (e.g. argumentative questioning, answering and refutation) is a limited pedagogical practice because it is adversarial under conditions of unequal power. It is also hierarchical and authoritarian, albeit in subtle ways. The Socratic Method is also a practice based on questionable epistemological assumptions about the character of knowledge and perpetuates an aggressive and masculinist mode of discourse. The Socratic Method may have a future but it would require what I call the dialectical radicalization of it. This would lead to a greater awareness and sensitivity to questions of power in the classroom pertaining to pedagogy that instructor-led forms of the Socratic Method have occluded. I ultimately attempt to recover the Socratic Method as a mode of intellectual emancipation based on challenging all forms of authority, triggering a shift in power from the instructor to the student and moving us beyond the “active learning method” which, just like Socrates and his followers, masks its power and control behind proclamations of openness and transparency.65 In Chapter 4, “Teaching Political Theory at a Prison in South Texas,” I argue that taking students to a local prison for a field trip creates a unique opportunity to engage students on issues central to democratic citizenship that may not come to the surface in a classroom setting. Leaving the ivory tower and entering a prison improves the learning environment. Students connect their experience at the prison with their own experiences as well as with course material on democracy, punishment, mass incarceration and power/domination. Even if some students opt out of the voluntary prison visit, a field trip to a prison creates a vibrant learning environment where students can share their experience with other classmates, as well as reflect on their own experiences with authority figures. The visit to the prison, finally, disrupts power relationships between student/instructor (e.g. subverts hierarchy) because all prison field-trip participants are inmates for a day. The prison visit, ironically, is a dialectical utopian experiment. We catch glimpses of what a world without a prison industrial complex and the lives it destroys might look like. By creating a space for the voices of

65 I thank an anonymous reader of this manuscript for suggesting this point.

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students as they emerge in a novel educational experience, the prison visit challenges the top-down epistemology of knowledge that is the main link in the authority, hierarchy and knowledge nexus. In Chapter 5, “Frantz Fanon’s Subversive Pedagogy,” I analyze the role education and pedagogy play in Fanon’s revolutionary politics. The violent overthrow of colonialism ultimately depends, in the words of Fanon, on “educating the masses.” My chapter elucidates the role Fanon’s subversive pedagogy plays in undermining colonial domination, white privilege and racism. Impossible to locate in any school and definite place, Fanon’s subversive pedagogy emerges as an embodied experience of disruption that shatters the colonial subject, undermines the discourse of universality as ideology and gives birth to new militant political identities. My chapter concludes with an analysis of the connections between Fanon’s subversive pedagogy and NFL athlete-protestors. Educators can draw on both to change the terms of the debate about racial injustice in the U.S. and promote subversive and enlightening forms of visceral learning. Chapter 6, “Teaching Political Theory ONLINE at a ‘Hispanic Serving Institution’,” challenges the critiques of online learning by authors who see it as a negative sign of the growing corporatization of the university and drift to substandard learning. I draw on my experience teaching online at a public institution of higher learning to challenge this negative interpretation. Several of my colleagues told me that I should not teach online and that they would sabotage the course by discouraging students from taking it. I decided to do it anyway. I refused to tow the department party line against online learning. As a result, I learned a lot about teaching and the potential of online course delivery and lived to tell about it. Drawing on the scholarly literature on teaching online and my experience teaching in this format, I offer a defense of it as a way to turn the neoliberal university against itself and offer the course to students who might not otherwise be able to take it. Just like face to face (F2F) learning experiences, teaching theory in an online format can be an effective and at times better way to explore a variety of political perspectives, foster critical thinking about pressing social, political and economic issues, empower students to find their voice, stimulate serious intellectual conversation and employ experiential/service learning. There are many opportunities for dialogue and engagement in the online setting (e.g. discussion forum) that are superior to F2F interactions. Teaching political theory online is also a way to give access to education for first-generation and non-traditional students who may not be able to attend F2F classes due to work and family obliga-

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tions. Finally, teaching political theory online provides a vantage point to improve teaching political theory in a F2F format. This chapter attempts to fill the gap in the scholarly literature insofar as I present what I have done and learned via teaching theory online and connect it to the broader theme of this book on the type of education needed in a democracy. This chapter also continues the broader theme of this book about disrupting the authority, hierarchy and knowledge nexus in the classroom. Disrupting this nexus allows radical political theory pedagogy as the practice of equality to emerge. Chapter 7, “Paulo Freire on Pedagogy and Revolution,” provides a critique of core assumptions pertaining to research and teaching that block radical, critical and utopian political science pedagogy. My goal in this chapter is to articulate an alternative to Leo Strauss’s pedagogical elitism as well as politically narrow modes of liberal and conservative “common core” approaches that mandate blind allegiance to the political and economic status quo. Through an engagement with the work of Paulo Freire, I chart paths for transforming political science into a form of radical critique and project for thoughtful social and political transformation. Political science pedagogy properly conceived as a radical, critical and utopian practice can produce citizens capable of refuting and challenging neoliberal dogmas and corrupt political and economic elites. The authority, hierarchy and knowledge nexus must be shattered to open the prospect of learning that complements democracy, not subverts it. In the conclusion, “Silence, Voice and Political Resistance in the Classroom,” I advance a critical intersectional and utopian approach to political science pedagogy. To this end, I pose a simple question. What are the best ways to reach and help silent students (in particular, women of color) find/refine their voices and come to see themselves as political agents? Drawing on research pertaining to underserved student populations and my own experience working with a predominantly Latin@ population in a border region of Texas, I argue that the best way to cultivate the agency and voice of students is through a culturally relevant curriculum, critical autobiography, inclusion of feminist perspectives, visceral learning and everyday utopianism in the classroom. This chapter delivers a final blow to the authority, hierarchy and knowledge nexus perpetuated by traditionalists and some good intentioned progressives housed in the medieval university and advances a general theory of radical political theory pedagogy as the practice of equality.

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All of the chapters in this book insist on the importance of student voice, making course material relevant and connecting it to the lives of our students. They also highlight the inescapable political choices involved in the construction of a curriculum. Additionally, all of the chapters criticize entrenched positions and try to stimulate a broader conversation about political science pedagogy through exposing the limits of mainstream approaches. It is time to shatter the authority, hierarchy and knowledge nexus. This nexus is a form of social control and stands in the way of equality and real democracy.

CHAPTER 2

Political Theory Pedagogy as Radical Practice

Abstract This chapter presents the work of Sheldon S. Wolin and Leo Strauss as it pertains to the politics of pedagogy. Their work shares the assumption that teaching is the transmission of knowledge. In contrast to this approach, I defend Jacques Derrida’s concept of textual interpretation because it displaces the authority of the instructor, increases the interpretive range of texts and opens a space for the voice of students. This chapter thus puts into question the authority, hierarchy and knowledge nexus present in Wolin and Strauss’s work and develops a form of radical political theory pedagogy as the practice of equality.

Sheldon S. Wolin, Leo Strauss and many other contemporary political theorists have argued that the practice of political theory is ultimately a pedagogical undertaking. One with a direct connection to the quality of democratic life. If this is true, then the question of how we conceptualize political theory (as a vocation; a conversation with the Masters; as reverence for a canon; and as participation in a tradition of discourse) necessarily has significant political and pedagogical implications.1 It is thus impossible to escape the 1 For Wolin, “education is one of those truly political matters,” The Presence of the Past: Essays on the State and the Constitution (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1989), p. 47. See Leo Strauss, Liberalism Ancient and Modern (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,

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politics of political theory notwithstanding the considerable effort by contemporary political theorists to evade this question.2 In light of this basic insight, this chapter argues that it is misleading to conceptualize political theory as a disinterested search for the truth and autonomous endeavor. Political theory as a practice and a discipline cannot evade questions of authority and power. Political theorists provide authoritative interpretations of texts, produce legitimation discourses for political orders, defend particular political concepts and thereby create an academic discipline that defines and controls the appropriate forms political theory can take that teach students what is worth knowing. To put it differently, political theorists transmit knowledge to students. Students learn about great thinkers. This influences their political horizons. Hence, a series of disciplinary norms constitute political theory as a pedagogical practice. Consequently, political theorists should not work to conceal the politics of political theory, but be more open and transparent about these political-pedagogical aspects and take a stand in terms of the specific political commitments and concerns that inform their work.3 The goal of such an approach is not to turn the classroom into a site of political indoctrination but to make political theory more politically relevant and contentious, and to make political theorists more self-reflective about the relationship between political theory, politics and pedagogy.

1968). See Michael Oakeshott, The Voice of Liberal Learning (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2001); J. G. A. Pocock, Virtue, Commerce and History (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1985); Politics, Language and Time: Essays on Political Thought and History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1960); and Eric Voegelin, The New Science of Politics: An Introduction (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1952). See also Martha Nussbaum, Not for Profit: Why Democracy Needs the Humanities (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010). For a critical interrogation of the politics of political theory, see Richard Ashcraft, “On the Problem of Methodology and the Nature of Political Theory,” Political Theory 1:3 (1975): 5–25; “Political Theory and the Problem of Ideology,” The Journal of Politics 42:3 (August 1980): 687–705. 2 Academic political theory refers to the attempt to evade political responsibility for how political theory is defined and practiced. For these and related issues, see Tradition, Interpretation, and Science: Political Theory in the American Academy, ed. John S. Nelson (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1986). 3 The failure to do so would constitute a hidden curriculum. On the “hidden curriculum”, see Ivan Illich, Deschooling Society (New York: Harper & Row, 1970); Michael W. Apple, Ideology and Curriculum (New York: Routledge, 1990); and Eric Margolis, ed., The Hidden Curriculum in Higher Education (New York: Routledge, 2001).

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Consistent with this goal, I want to make it clear from the beginning that my aspiration as a political theorist is to have an impact on the reigning distributions of power in society as it pertains to inequalities based on class, race, gender, sexuality and ability. I explicitly promote radical egalitarianism as one of the prerequisites for a vibrant democratic society. To this end, I endorse critical, radical and utopian modes of inquiry and practice that call into the question the economic, social, political and cultural parameters of the status quo.4 We are all familiar with arguments pertaining to neoliberalism, the growing corporatization of the university and the transformation of all modes of human conduct into rational self-maximizing activities. Given this, a critical, radical and utopian stance in relation to the economic and political status quo strikes me as a minimal condition for opening paths to emancipation and envisioning/practicing the transformation of society into something better.5 Fighting for the democratization of democracy and resisting the neoliberal assault on public life raise the stakes of the pedagogical mission of the university and, therefore, the stakes involved in contesting the traditional practice of political theory pedagogy. Putting the matter in this admittedly extreme manner gives us a bit of distance from the practice of political theory. We need to be in a better position to evaluate and reflect on some of the major currents, and the range of issues, that have informed political theory as an academic subfield in the discipline of political science over the last seven decades, if not longer.6 In what follows, I address this question by putting pressure on one of the many fault lines in contemporary political theory; namely, the perceived divide between Sheldon S. Wolin and Leo Strauss. According

4 See Karl Marx, “For a Ruthless Criticism of Everything Existing (Karl Marx to Arnold Ruge),” in Marx-Engels Reader, Second Edition, ed. Robert C. Tucker (New York: W. W. Norton, 1978). 5 See Wendy Brown, Undoing the Demos: Neoliberalism’s Stealth Revolution (New York: Zone Book, 2015); Sheldon S. Wolin, Democracy Incorporated: Managed Democracy and the Specter of Inverted Totalitarianism (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008); Clyde W. Barrow, The Entrepreneurial Intellectual in the Corporate University (Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave, 2018); and Joel Spring, Education and the Rise of the Global Economy (Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Publishers, 1998). 6 See John G. Gunnell, The Descent of Political Theory: The Genealogy of an American Vocation (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993); David Ricci, The Tragedy of Political Science: Politics, Scholarship, and Democracy (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1984); and Raymond Seidelman, Disenchanted Realists: Political Science and the American Crisis (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1985).

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to a 2010 national survey on major trends in political theory, Leo Strauss ranked fifth and Sheldon S. Wolin ranked eighth (behind John Rawls [1]; J¨Urgen Habermas [2]; Michel Foucault [3]; William E. Connolly [4]; Michael Walzer [6]; and Charles Taylor [7]). Strauss and Wolin are highly regarded by the 1086 survey respondents.7 This is not surprising because they have largely set the terms for defining the practice of political theory in the twentieth century. It is common to focus on the divide between Wolin and Strauss. There is no denying the fact that there are differences between them (e.g. Wolin as an egalitarian left liberal and Strauss as a conservative elitist). Nevertheless, I argue here that there are deep moments of similitude and overlap between them. This emerges when one examines how both Wolin and Strauss conceptualize the project of political theory and how it pertains to pedagogy. Wolin and Strauss are actually quite similar in terms of their epistemological commitments, the valorization of contemplation, their uncritical acceptance of the public/private dichotomy, their relationship to the “republic of property” and their critique of political science.8 Wolin and Strauss are also committed to creating a common culture based on passing down an intellectual inheritance, teaching students about citizenship and public life within the framework of liberal democracy, and both fail to put into question the legitimacy of one of the grounding pillars of liberal democracy, namely, the “republic of property.”9 As political theorists, they are not as different from each other as we might believe. Their first polemical encounter in the highly influential 1963 American Political Science Review essay written by John H. Schaar and Sheldon S. Wolin on 7 See Matthew J. Moore, “Political Theory Today: Results of a National Survey,” PS: Polit-

ical Science and Politics 43 (April 2010): 267. 8 By “republic of property,” I am referring to the “transcendental structures of law and property” as described by Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri in Commonwealth (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2009), p. 19. For them, “the establishment of the constitutional order and the rule of law served to defend and legitimate private property” (p. 9). 9 See Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, Commonwealth, 2009. See also Benjamin R. Barber, “The Politics of Political Science: ‘Value-Free’ Theory and the Wolin-Strauss Dust Up of 1963,” American Political Science Review 100 (November 2006): 539–545. See Anne Norton, Leo Strauss and the Politics of American Empire (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004). See also Nicholas Xenos, Cloaked in Virtue: Unveiling Leo Strauss and the Rhetoric of American Foreign Policy (New York: Routledge, 2008). See Gregory Bruce Smith, “Leo Strauss and the Straussians: An Anti-democratic Cult?” PS: Political Science and Politics 30 (June 1997): 180–189. See Steven B. Smith, “Leo Strauss’s Platonic Liberalism,” Political Theory 28 (December 2000): 787–809.

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Herbert J. Storing’s (ed.) Essays on the Scientific Study of Politics obscures the overlap. More recently, Wolin’s critique of Strauss and Straussians in Democracy, Inc. as well as earlier in The Presence of the Past also hides important similarities.10 My general theory of radical political theory pedagogy as the practice of equality disrupts the authority, hierarchy and knowledge nexus and opens new directions for the emancipatory project beyond the models of pedagogy offered by Strauss and Wolin. My alternative position draws on the work of Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri (critique of the “republic of property”), Jacques Rancière (teaching as an ignorant schoolmaster) and Jacques Derrida (textual dissemination).11 In this vein, I argue that we must broaden the tradition/canon, reject authoritative and hegemonic knowledge claims in the classroom and enlist political theory in the struggle to create a better world. Contra Wolin, practices of interpretation are not predetermined by the historical terms of discourse, but should be open to indeterminate horizons.12 Contra Strauss, political philosophy is open to the future, not something bound by an “absolute horizon.”13 In my view, political theory should constantly reinvent itself in response to changing political conditions. My alternative position attempts to open texts and pedagogy to an egalitarian sphere of disputation that permanently displaces the authority of the instructor and encourages students to be insurrectionary agents of their own enlightenment; joyfully irreverent, and critical of the many ruses of power they will encounter in the realm of politics and, by definition, in the classroom. This chapter is

10 See John H. Schaar and Sheldon S. Wolin, “Review: Essays on the Scientific Study of Politics: A Critique,” American Political Science Review 57 (March 1963): 125–150. See also Herbert J. Storing et al., “Replies to Schaar and Wolin: I-IV,” American Political Science Review 57 (March 1963): 151–160. See also Wolin, Democracy, Incorporated, 2008; Wolin, The Presence of the Past: Essays on the State and the Constitution, 1989. 11 See Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, Commonwealth, 2009. See also Jacques Derrida, Limited Inc., trans. Samuel Weber, Jeffrey Melman, and Alan Bass (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1990). See also Jacques Derrida, Writing and Difference, trans. Alan Bass (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978); Jacques Derrida, Of Grammatology, trans. Gayartri Chakravorty Spivak (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1974). See also Jacques Rancière, The Ignorant Schoolmaster: Five Lessons in Intellectual Emancipation, trans. Kristin Ross (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1991). 12 See Sheldon S. Wolin, Politics and Vision: Continuity and Innovation and Western Political Thought (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1960/2004), pp. 1–26. 13 Leo Strauss, Natural Right and History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1953), p. 35.

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thus a contribution to a general theory of radical political theory pedagogy as the practice of equality.

Leo Strauss and the Re-discovery of Political Philosophy Leo Strauss’s (1899–1973) influence on political philosophy in the twentieth century and beyond is impossible to deny. After leaving Europe in 1937, Strauss had a distinguished teaching career at the University of Chicago, with stints at St. John’s College, The New School for Social Research, and Occidental College, to name a few of the places where he taught during his lifetime. His legacy lives on via his writings. He has many devoted students who occupy positions of influence at elite academic institutions and in government. There is a steady stream of publications pertaining to his life and work. Among many of his devoted followers, the alleged moral collapse of Western “high” civilization and its attendant social chaos validate Strauss’s claim that nihilism, mass culture, relativism and mobocracy threatened the philosophical foundations of the Western world. The issues first flagged by Strauss continue to frame debates for academics, media pundits and advisors to politicians. Strauss’s project was ultimately about maintaining authority by legitimating inequality, inculcating deference to aristocrat intellectuals, keeping the masses pacified and ensuring law and order. He is thus an apostle of the authority, hierarchy and knowledge nexus. Strauss published on a wide range of themes, he deemed to be foundational for Western civilization and he urged his followers to “rally around the flag of the Western tradition.”14 Strauss thus sought to defend the intellectual hegemony of the Western world and he articulated a qualified end of history thesis (before the end of history thesis), where he came to view an aristocratic form of liberal democracy as the next best, and only viable option to the rule of philosopher-kings. As he puts it, the “best regime is the absolute rule of the wise and the best practicable regime is the rule of gentlemen.”15 He posited incontestable transcendental foundations (i.e. natural law) as the ground supporting the political status quo and 14 Leo Strauss, The Rebirth of Classical Political Rationalism: An Introduction to the Thought of Leo Strauss (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989), p. 72. See also Alan Bloom on the universal, imperial and hegemonic mission of the Western tradition in The Closing of the American Mind (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1987). 15 Strauss, Natural Right and History, p. 185.

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he enlisted the authority of the Western tradition to immunize this arché (e.g. beginning; origin; first cause) from attack. Strauss maintained that there was “absolutism inherent in our great Western tradition.”16 Common people failed to see this foundation. Since they played no significant part in Strauss’s project, except in terms of deference and obedience, this was not a problem. Indeed, Strauss believed common people are incapable of reading anything more complicated than a comic strip. For them, philosophy was something repulsive. Hence, pacification of the masses requires myths (philosophical “truths” expressed in accessible rhetorical forms).17 The unity and depth of Strauss’s body of work as well as its internal tensions and unresolved ambiguities, account for Strauss’s relevance today and the significance of his legacy.18 The aforementioned themes, and a number of other key ideas, orient and organize Strauss’s thinking as a strange constellation of tensions, not a totalizing system. The first pertains to political philosophy’s relationship to the broader society. For Strauss, the political philosopher has a particular responsibility in a political order. The goal of political philosophy is essentially pedagogical. As such, Strauss formulated an “ideal type” of the scholar as a classically educated male versed in the timeless wisdom of ancient Greek philosophy. Political philosophy has reached its goal when it becomes the “teacher of legislators.”19 Strauss argues against the politicization of political philosophy. It is not to serve a specific political cause. Philosophy, if it is to remain even a close approximation to what it was in classical Greece, must have a certain level of distance from the specific political concerns of the day and ask instead the timeless questions. As such, pedagogy as Bildung is committed to the cultivation of the complete

16 Strauss, Rebirth, p. 12. 17 For Strauss, it was essential that there was an “unqualified commitment of the many to the

opinions on which society rests”; Strauss, What Is Political Philosophy? (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1959/1988), p. 222. It was also essential that there were things about which “it is absolutely forbidden to laugh”; Strauss, Thoughts on Machiavelli (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1958), p. 40. 18 See The Crisis of Liberal Democracy: A Straussian Perspective, eds. Kenneth L. Deutsch and Walter Soffer, corrected edition (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1987). See also Thomas L. Pangle, Leo Strauss: An Introduction to His Thought and Intellectual Legacy (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006). 19 Strauss, What Is Political Philosophy? p. 84.

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person.20 This aristocratic intellectual receives the highest form of education. Strauss calls it “royal education.”21 For Strauss, the emergence of modern political science as an empirical-positivist method, or what he calls the new political science, annulled the pedagogical aspect of political philosophy as Bildung and led to “conformism and philistinism.”22 At its worst, social science positivism represented the “victory of the gutter.”23 The success of the pedagogical mission of Strauss hinges on the teacher’s authority acquired via the acquisition of timeless knowledge and depends on the student’s ultimate deference to this authority. Knowledge (epist¯em¯e) is the primary goal of political philosophy and, as Strauss states, “political philosophy is the conscious, coherent and relentless effort to replace opinions about the political fundamentals by knowledge regarding them.”24 This knowledge was contained in classical texts and accessed via nonarbitrary interpretations acquired through careful reading. Strauss was a close reader of texts and he sought to avoid “arbitrary interpretation.”25 He urged readers to pay “the greatest attention to every detail.”26 Studying these texts and “Great Books” was a way of “listening to the conversation between the great philosophers.”27 The knowledge claims of the instructor, as well as the designation of certain books as “great,” gives the conversation between masters a certain authority. This in turn supplements the teacher’s authority. Listening to this conversation, Strauss claims, is foremost an exercise in modesty. As Strauss puts it, “philosophy in the original

20 Bildung is “a broad educational and cultural background.” See The Oxford Duden German Dictionary (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990), p. 159. Bildung also implies self-cultivation, maturation and the formation of character. 21 Strauss, What Is Political Philosophy? p. 38. 22 Strauss, What Is Political Philosophy? p. 20. Wolin also claimed that political science as

method led to “conformism.” See Wolin, “Political Theory: From Vocation to Invocation,” in Vocations of Political Theory, eds. Frank and Tambornino (Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press, 2000), p. 12. 23 Strauss, Liberalism Ancient and Modern (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1968/1995), p. 222. 24 Strauss, What Is Political Philosophy? p. 12. 25 Strauss, On Tyranny, eds. Victor Gourevitch and Michael S. Roth (New York: Free Press,

1963/1991), p. 27. See also Strauss, Persecution and the Art of Writing (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1952/1980). 26 Strauss, On Tyranny, p. 27. 27 Strauss, “What Is Liberal Education?” in Liberalism Ancient and Modern, p. 7.

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meaning of the term is nothing but knowledge of one’s ignorance.”28 In addition to this arguably skeptical side to Strauss (thinking that results from his adoration of Socrates) he also states: “The philosopher ceases to be a philosopher at the moment at which the ‘subjective certainty’ of a solution becomes stronger than his awareness of the problematic character of that solution.”29 Strauss nonetheless found support for his second best option of rule by classically educated aristocrats. The problematic character of philosophy (e.g. antinomies and contradictions) in no way interfered with this aspect of Strauss’s political project. Ancient political thinking was hardly an unconditional endorsement of democratic politics. Given its hostility to democracy, the combination of liberal democracy and ancient political thinking only on the surface constitutes a tension in Strauss’s thinking. At a deeper level, the tension evaporates for this amalgamation is consistent with the doctrine of democratic elitism.30 Indeed, Strauss was an unrepentant elitist and maintained that the practice and preservation of the tradition of political-philosophical inquiry should be restricted to the few. The few were well-born men educated at elite institutions. Strauss even goes so far as to say that a woman’s place is in the home, that women are inferior to men and that a “gentleman looks down on many things which are highly esteemed by the vulgar.”31 For Strauss, women and common people should stay away from the inner sanctum of philosophy. Alexandre Kojève flagged the negative implications of Strauss’s position. For him, Strauss risked situating political philosophy in a closed society. As Kojève put it, this was problematic because “any closed society that adopts a doctrine, any ‘elite’ selected in terms of a doctrinal teaching, tends to consolidate the prejudices entailed by that doctrine.”32 Strauss nevertheless remained committed to an elitist version of political philosophy and liberal democracy. 28 Strauss, On Tyranny, p. 196. 29 Ibid. 30 See Peter Bachrach, The Theory of Democratic Elitism: A Critique (London, UK: University of London Press, 1967). 31 See Strauss, Socrates and Aristophanes (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1966), p. 210. See also Strauss, Natural Right and History, p. 142. For a defense of the superiority of men by a prominent Straussian, see Harvey C. Mansfield, Manliness (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006). Mansfield states: “I take the side of common sense. I like its forthright defense of stereotypes regarding the sexes,” p. x. 32 Kojève, On Tyranny, p. 155.

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For Strauss, ordinary people do not have the leisure to read, think and cultivate the mental faculties that support liberal democracy. He wonders by what right a low-class human being is still even a human being.33 Whereas Tocqueville praised lawyers and saw the practical and political habits of Americans (e.g. reading newspapers; attending town meetings; and serving on juries) as key for preserving American democracy, Strauss believed that ordinary people were sleeping dogs and we should “let sleeping dogs lie.”34 For him, most people are unfit for participation in a democracy. Strauss was also explicitly anti-utopian and warned against “visionary expectations from politics.”35 For him, economic inequality was natural and inevitable. Since it was natural, there was nothing to fix. The same was true of intellectual inequality. Hence, according to Strauss, “the philosopher and the nonphilosophers cannot have genuine common deliberations.”36 For Strauss, an unbridgeable chasm separates aristocratic intellectuals from common people. The latter flounder in watered-down forms of education and technical training. Real scholars are engaged in soul-craft, leave Plato’s cave, and they pursue a liberal education. For Strauss, “liberal education is liberation from vulgarity.”37 For Strauss, “democracy is meant to be an aristocracy.”38 Given the divide between the philosopher and common people, deception (myths) were needed as a form of consolation and domestication of the ignorant majority to prod them to live virtuous lives (e.g. religion), defer to the wisdom of gentlemen (e.g. rule by the wise) and accept the absolute

33 Strauss, Liberalism Ancient and Modern, p. 75. 34 See Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, trans. George Lawrence (New York:

Perennial, 2000). See also Strauss, “Liberal Education and Responsibility,” in Liberalism Ancient and Modern, p. 14. There was thus an implicit alliance and agreement between behavioralists and Straussians on the limited ability and capacity of ordinary people to participate in politics. Behavioralists discovered this with public opinion and knowledge surveys. Strauss and Straussians justified it with the wisdom obtained from classical texts. See Stephen Earl Bennett, “‘Know-Nothings’ Revisited: The Meaning of Political Ignorance Today,” Social Science Quarterly 69 (January 1988): 476–490. For a counter-position on this, see James L. Gibson and Gregory A. Caldeira, “Knowing the Supreme Court? A Reconsideration of Public Ignorance of the High Court,” The Journal of Politics 71:2 (April 2009): 429–441. 35 Strauss, “Liberal Education and Responsibility,” in Liberalism Ancient and Modern, p. 24. 36 Strauss, “Liberal Education and Responsibility,” in Liberalism Ancient and Modern,

p. 14. 37 Strauss, “What Is Liberal Education?” in Liberalism Ancient and Modern, p. 8. 38 Strauss, Liberalism Ancient and Modern, p. 4.

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legitimacy of the status quo (e.g. patriotism). In this regard, at least two different strands of pedagogy are apparent in Strauss. One for the elite and another for the masses. The former involves the pursuit of truth; the latter requires myth, deception and noble lies. Strauss’s elitism was also apparent in his approach to reading texts. Via textual interpretation, Strauss sets himself up as the master of locating the apparent meanings, as well as the hidden ones, contained in the written word. In this regard, there were exoteric and esoteric meanings in texts and Strauss wrote books that explicated these meanings.39 Authors “wrote between the lines” which made it necessary for readers to “read between the lines.”40 As stated earlier, though, Strauss seeks to avoid “arbitrary interpretation.” Thus, the theorist must discard everything that may keep him bound to a particular context. He must depart to the ethereal realm of pure reflection. For Strauss, the end of philosophy was the “disinterested contemplation of the eternal.”41 Philosophy is possible “only if there is an absolute horizon or a natural horizon in contradistinction to the historically changing horizon of the caves.”42 To repeat, philosophy is only possible for the enlightened few. It is not possible for the demos because they are unwilling to be deferential to it.43 Deference is ultimately a political-pedagogical and hegemonic project involving indoctrination. Even though Strauss claims “liberal education cannot be simply indoctrination,” his inclusion of the word ‘simply’ in this citation implies that education receives its outlines and forms as a project of indoctrination.44 Education as indoctrination works alongside Strauss’s view that to be “inhuman is the same as to be unteachable.”45 To be unteachable would mean to resist Strauss’s project of indoctrination.

39 Strauss’s obsession with the explication of classical texts was not politically neutral. According to Jacques Rancière, “explication is not only the stultifying weapon of pedagogues but the very bond of the social order”; The Ignorant Schoolmaster, 1991, p. 117. 40 On this issue see Arthur Melzer, “On the Pedagogical Motive for Esoteric Writing,” Journal of Politics 69 (November 2007): 1015–1031. I agree that esoteric writing (if such a thing exists) requires close reading. As I shall make clear in this chapter, I disagree that the aim of philosophical education is to “convert” (p. 1018). 41 Strauss, Liberalism Ancient and Modern, p. 20. 42 Strauss, Natural Right and History, p. 35. 43 Strauss, Thoughts on Machiavelli, p. 296. 44 Strauss, “What Is Liberal Education?” in Liberalism Ancient and Modern, p. 4. 45 Strauss, Rebirth, p. 7.

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Exactly how this plays out comes into even greater focus when we bring Wolin into the conversation.

Sheldon S. Wolin and the Making of Political Theory Sheldon S. Wolin (1922–2015) has had an undeniable impact on political science and political theory. Educated at Oberlin College and Harvard University, Wolin had a distinguished teaching career and taught at UC Berkeley, UC Santa Cruz and Princeton University, to name a few of the institutions he taught at during his career. His publications are wide ranging. He influenced not only the identity of political theory as a vocation but he engaged what he believed to be the most pressing issues of the time. These topics include the increased power of the state, the destruction of democratic life, the corporate takeover of the political realm, the threat of new forms of totalitarianism and the transformation of the human being into a calculating economic machine. Wolin’s legacy is strong and alive and many of his talented students have influential academic positions at elite universities.46 Like Strauss, Wolin was also interested in foundations, but he conceived of these foundations as a dialectical and conflict-prone relationship between the political activity of the demos who must perpetually fight off and challenge the political state and its weapons (e.g. constitutionalism) and not as some sort of trans-historical foundation. The fight between fugitive democrats and the state only flared up occasionally but it was nonetheless an ever-present possibility. For Wolin, political theory was not primarily a philosophical undertaking but a “civic activity.”47 However, in a way that is arguably similar to the stance taken by Leo Strauss in relation to “Great Books” that set the terms and parameters of political philosophy, Wolin casts the political theorist as a pilgrim who pays an ongoing homage to the tradition of political theory. For Wolin, the contemporary politi-

46 For critical engagement with Wolin’s work, see Democracy and Vision: Sheldon Wolin and the Vicissitudes of the Political, eds. Aryeh Botwinick and William W. Connolly (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001). See also Vocations of Political Theory, eds. Jason A. Frank and John Tambornino (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2000). 47 Wolin, The Presence of the Past. For Wolin, Political theory is “primarily a civic and secondarily an academic activity” (p. 1).

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cal theorist “enters into a debate the terms of which have largely been set beforehand.”48 The debate is “transmitted as a cultural legacy.”49 Wolin’s position is evident in his foundational early writings like Politics and Vision. It was also the result of his attempt to carve out a specific disciplinary space and identity for political theory. For Wolin, political theory was distinct from political science as science (e.g. behavioralism, positivism and methodism) that emerged in the middle of the twentieth century. Wolin’s article “Political Theory as a Vocation” makes this clear and does nothing less than construct a distinct sub-disciplinary identity for political theory. He identified two different and competing conceptions of knowledge (epist¯em¯e). Scientists sought objective knowledge. This required the de-contextualization of data. Appropriate methods and techniques revealed statistical significance. In contrast to this approach, political theory was a historical project that generated a distinct form of knowledge and political wisdom via the preservation of past theories. For Wolin, political theory was a “historical undertaking that exposed the nature of our present predicament.”50 The knowledge aspirations and claims of the political science technicians narrowed their focus and led them to measure what was measurable and to stay out of the business of making partisan and value-laden statements about the quality and direction of political life. The political theorist, in contrast, grappled with the political issues of her day. It is striking to note that Strauss and Wolin’s negative descriptions of the political science technicians are arguably identical. Because they aspired to be scientists, Wolin argued that political science technicians avoided “fundamental criticism” and “fundamental commitment.”51 In contrast to the vocation of the political theorist that was motivated by a specific calling and commitment to the common good, methodism (which Wolin called a “proposal for shaping the mind”) evaded politics, and purged public concern from the field of political science in the name of dispassionate and objective research.52 For Wolin, this constituted nothing less than a “crisis in political education.”53 48 Wolin, Politics and Vision, p. 21. 49 Ibid. 50 Wolin, Politics and Vision, p. xxiii. 51 Wolin, “Political Theory as a Vocation,” in Fugitive Democracy and Other Essays, p. 11. 52 Wolin, “Political Theory as a Vocation,” in Fugitive Democracy and Other Essays, p. 6. 53 Wolin, “Political Theory as a Vocation,” in Fugitive Democracy and Other Essays, p. 24.

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In addition to clarifying the forms of knowledge and wisdom generated by political theory, Wolin’s “Political Theory as a Vocation” was also a response to the growing attack waged against political theory by political scientists who viewed the historical and philosophical aspects of political theorizing as sloppy, unscientific, prescriptive and irrelevant. In a way that was, yet again, similar to Leo Strauss, Wolin sought to provide a ground to legitimate the practice of political theory in a discipline that was increasingly hostile to it. For Wolin, political philosophy was “not an essence with an eternal nature,” like it was for Leo Strauss.54 However, political theory for Wolin was also “not an arbitrary construction” (just like Strauss) but generated knowledge as wisdom and vision (also like Strauss).55 For Wolin, political theory generated forms of knowledge that were responsive to the needs of the political moment (Wolin calls it, drawing on Karl Polyani, “tacit knowledge”).56 There was much more to Wolin’s mode of political theorizing than carving out a space for the autonomous practice of political theory within the confines of the academy and foregrounding public commitment.57 Once the space was created for the practice of political theory—“a privileged theoretical vantage point”—as Wolin puts it, the question became what exactly would Wolin’s form of political theorizing take above and beyond his view of political theory as a vocation and his interpretations of canonical thinkers in Politics and Vision?58 His concept of “fugitive democracy” provides the answer to this question.59 For Wolin, fugitive democracy was the high point of politics. It was Wolin’s antidote for the nihilism of consumer culture, the transformation of the human into homo economicus and the nightmare of inverted totalitarianism. Even though it was essentially episodic, fugitive democracy 54 Wolin, Politics and Vision, p. 3. 55 Wolin, Politics and Vision, p. 15. 56 See Democracy and Vision: Sheldon Wolin and the Vicissitudes of the Political, eds. Aryeh

Botwinick and William E. Connolly (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001). 57 Wolin states: “The activity of theorizing declares its autonomy from politics”; Fugitive Democracy and Other Essays, p. 293. 58 Wolin, Fugitive Democracy and Other Essays, p. 288. 59 Wolin and John H. Schaar’s, The Berkeley Rebellion and Beyond: Essays on Politics and

Education in the Technological Society (New York: Vintage Books, 1970) provides the bridge between political theory as a vocation and fugitive democracy. Wolin arguably underwent a “radicalization” by the student movement he encountered while teaching at UC Berkeley.

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combined protest and pedagogy and named the unfinished project of the self-fashioning of the demos. Wolin viewed education not as the acquisition of a skill set and techniques but the “development of individuals who will be able to practice the life of free citizens.”60 Even if it accomplished nothing, however, fugitive democracy was still good because it named the possibility of human dignity and aspiration for self-determination. Fugitive democracy was not a form as much as it was the pure voice of the people acting in concert and in public against the threat of state power. It was unmediated democratic energy. It was the political form of democracy. It exceeded all boundaries and limits. Fugitive democracy was irreducible to democracy conceived of as a form of rule.61 This final statement led political theorist George Kateb to flag the ambivalence but also the despair and rage embedded in Wolin’s formulation. Wolin appears to celebrate disruption as such and fugitive democracy, for Kateb, “borders on the nihilistic, the merely destructive.” “At the bottom of Wolin’s notion of fugitive democracy is, precisely,” Kateb continues, “rage.”62 Kateb’s point is interesting but it misses something more significant, namely, the contradiction between the political side of Wolin’s work (fugitive democracy), on one hand, and the epistemological side (political theory as a vocation), on the other. The divide between these two sides of Wolin’s work is striking. Fugitive democracy cannot be contained in constitutions and bound by boundaries.63 Political theory as a vocation operates within the tradition and the inherited terms of discourse.64 For Wolin, the theorist “enters into a debate the terms of which have largely been set beforehand.”65 Whereas fugitive democracy explodes onto the stage of history and is unpredictable and destructive, the political theorist is bound by a “speculative horizon” that 60 Wolin, The Presence of the Past, p. 62. 61 Wolin, “Fugitive Democracy,” in Fugitive Democracy and Other Essays. 62 Kateb in Democracy and Vision, p. 45. 63 Wolin formulates a political challenge to constitutional orders but it is destined to fail because his challenge (e.g. fugitive democracy) leaves the material foundation of constitutionalism untouched. For Hardt and Negri, “the concept of property and the defense of property remain the foundation of every modern constitution.” Hardt and Negri, Commonwealth, p. 15. 64 Wolin claims that the epic theorist is bold and daring and “ignores formal protocols”; Fugitive Democracy and Other Essays, p. 120. 65 Wolin, Politics and Vision, p. 21.

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serves to stabilize the meaning of selected texts and connects the past with the present.66 Fugitive democracy (what George Kateb claims is “underdeveloped, barely sketched”) is “episodic, rare” and “rebellious.”67 Political theory as a vocation is a continuous foray into the tradition and thus resembles the stable practices that contain and possibly annihilate fugitive bursts of energy. For Wolin, the political theorist is compelled “to abide by certain rules and usages.”68 Whereas state power annihilates fugitive democracy, political theory as a vocation empowers and elevates the practitioner of political theory to the status of protector of the threatened tradition (just like Strauss). Political theory as a vocation thus serves a valuable function. It provides the political theorist with solace and a comfortable resting place from the potential futility of the fugitive political activity of the demos. As I have already indicated, the divide between explosive fugitive democracy, on one hand, and the stabilizing/interpretive side of political theory as a vocation, on the other, is a puzzling tension in Wolin’s work. In my view, Wolin cannot think himself out of this antinomy. Kateb targets the latent nihilism in fugitive democracy. Political theorist Linda Zerilli targets the other side of Wolin’s work and criticizes the conceptualization of political theory as a perennial dialogue and conversation (as Leo Strauss and Michael Oakeshott also stipulate) because, for Zerilli, this “obscures the historical conditions that have shaped the ‘perennial dialogue.’”69 More problematically, this blindness (and denial) of the politics involved in the constitution of a canon and tradition results in policing the meaning and content of the tradition as well as the participants in the conversation. This is a way of defending “their own cultural authority for which they refuse

66 Wolin, Politics and Vision, p. 23. 67 Kateb, Democracy and Vision, p. 44; Wolin, “Fugitive Democracy,” in Fugitive Democracy

and Other Essays, p. 100. 68 Wolin, Politics and Vision, 22. 69 See Linda Zerilli, “Machiavelli’s Sisters,” p. 257. Strauss and especially Oakeshott are

obsessed with the conversation with the past. See Michael Oakeshott, The Voice of Liberal Learning (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2001). For an uncritical deployment of conversation see Luke Philip Plotica, Michael Oakeshott and the Conversation of Political Thought (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2015). See also Aryeh Botwinick on the similarities between Oakeshott and Wolin. For Botwinick, “what unites Wolin and Oakeshott is far deeper and more significant than what divides them,” namely, their “conceptions of theory, philosophies of history, and education.” Democracy and Vision: Sheldon Wolin and the Vicissitudes of the Political, eds. Botwinick and Connolly, p. 118.

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to make themselves accountable.”70 On the surface, the concept of conversation and dialogue seems to be inclusive and apolitical. Who could reasonably object to it? Oakeshott, Strauss and Wolin valorize conversation as a dominant trope for political theory. One can legitimately wonder, though, if ‘conversation’ is a ruse that serves to mask the power of the lead interlocutor who sets the terms of the conversation. For Zerilli, the wateryeyed appeal to conversation with the masters is “an academic fiction.”71 I suppose another way of labeling the appeal to conversation within the sub-discipline of political theory is as a “noble lie.” For Strauss and Wolin, the political theorist is a priest and reverential sage who preserves an inherited tradition of inquiry (the construction of which is always the result of a power struggle) via appropriate interpretations of a limited number of texts. They deny culpability in the ways that political theory is inescapably a practice of power. Strauss insists that political philosophy as a quest for answers to fundamental questions is outside of politics because it is the “humanizing quest for the eternal order” and the theorist is merely an “umpire.”72 Wolin claims that “the history of political philosophy has been a dialogue” and the political theorist is just like an umpire insofar as he “declares his autonomy from politics.”73 Wolin and Strauss have a deep respect for the Western tradition of “Great Books.” They employ static (in the case of Strauss) and near static (in the case of Wolin) epistemological horizons that determine in advance the content of the perennial political questions and the proper range of political concerns as a result of what Wolin calls a “privileged theoretical vantage point.”74 Strauss and Wolin also criticize methodism (behavioralism) and oppose identity politics.75 For Strauss, identity politics and multicultur-

70 Zerilli, p. 270. In Strauss’s What Is Political Philosophy? he states that the political philosophy is the “umpire”, p. 84. This implies impartiality, objectivity and autonomy within the parameters and terms of the game. 71 See Zerilli, p. 267. 72 Leo Strauss, Natural Right and History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1965),

p. 34. See also Strauss, What Is Political Philosophy? p. 84. 73 Wolin, Politics and Vision, p. 12. See also Wolin, Fugitive Democracy and Other Essays, p. 288. 74 Wolin, Fugitive Democracy and Other Essays, p. 288. 75 Wolin’s earlier emphasis on a unified and relatively homogeneous public was dropped

and he came to see that a “unified demos is no longer possible or even desirable.” See Wolin, Democracy, Inc., p. 290.

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alism threaten the sovereignty of the Western tradition and undermine its authority.76 For Wolin, identity politics threatens the common with intractable fragmentation.77 Since grievance recognition relies on the state, this is at odds with Wolin’s anti-statist position. Their respective conceptions of the type of knowledge gained from political philosophizing are not identical. They both nonetheless endorse conceptions of knowledge (epist¯em¯e) that secure and fortress their own authority. The point is to transmit this knowledge to students.

Conclusion Is there another possible direction for the political theorist, if one agrees that Strauss’s and Wolin’s approaches are insufficiently reflective about how political theory has been deployed as a form of cultural control, obfuscation of unequal property relations and to reproduce a ruling elite? As I stated earlier, one of the goals for political theorists should be to reflect more precisely on the practice of political theory as it pertains to pedagogy. As I have already indicated, my goal is to formulate and practice an explicitly self-critical form of political theory grounded in egalitarianism and a radically democratic orientation as part of a general theory of radical political theory pedagogy. My alternative position on the project of political theory draws on the work of Hardt and Negri, Rancière and Derrida.78 Derrida’s views on textual interpretation challenge the republic of property, shatter the view that a text has one meaning and broaden the tradition/canon. Rancière is helpful to my general theory of radical political theory pedagogy insofar as radical egalitarianism constitutes the essence of his work. He urges political theorists to be pedagogical provocateurs and to teach as “ignorant schoolmasters.” In his words, “a professor is neither more

76 See also, Alan Bloom, The Closing of the American Mind, 1987. 77 Wolin, Fugitive Democracy and Other Essays, pp. 409, 419, 420. 78 I have already commented on Hardt and Negri. It is worth pointing out that William E. Connolly, a thinker ranked 4th in terms of influence by the same 2010 national survey of political theorists, has expanded what counts as political theory and is deeply influenced by French post-structuralism. I thank an anonymous reviewer of this manuscript for suggesting this point.

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nor less intelligent than another man.”79 Education is not a matter of the transmission of knowledge but is a battle for an egalitarian order. The goal is to restore the “equality of nature.”80 Allow me to be more specific about my general theory of radical political theory pedagogy by drawing on Derrida’s work. In contrast to the Wolin–Strauss approach to politics and pedagogy, a more egalitarian approach might start with one of the grounding assumptions formulated by Derrida in Limited Inc.: “A written sign carries with it a force that breaks with its context.” He continues: “The sign possesses the characteristic of being readable even if the moment of its production is irrevocably lost and even if I do not know what its alleged author-scripter consciously intended to say at the moment he wrote it, i.e., abandoned it to its essential drift.”81 Apparently, there is force of rupture embedded in all signs that opens texts to an inexhaustible dispersion of meaning.82 In addition to this aspect, Derrida also accorded a new level of dignity to seemingly marginal comments made by an author. What may seem to be incidental and not worthy of attention in a text, Derrida argued, is actually in certain cases the text’s condition of possibility. For him, what is in the margin does not stay there but threatens the center.83 The play of these differences ultimately undermines the text’s coherence and stable meaning. The author cannot control and secure its meaning.84 Imagine the impact of this on reading texts, especially with students. The careful reader that pays attention to these details challenges and subverts traditional and mainstream understandings. In this regard, she is analogous to a discerning democratic agent who resists being seduced by the rhetoric and empty talk of politicians and authoritarian pedagogues ped-

79 Jacques Rancière, Ignorant Schoolmaster, p. 102. Teaching as an ignorant schoolmaster would mean practicing emancipation in the classroom. As he states, “there is no hierarchy of intellectual capacity” (p. 27). 80 Rancière, Ignorant Schoolmaster, p. 27. 81 Jacques Derrida, Limited Inc., ed. Gerald Graff, trans. Geffrey Mehlman and Samuel

Weber (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1988), p. 9. 82 See Jacques Derrida, Margins of Philosophy, trans. Alan Bass (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982). 83 For an example of this in reference to a long footnote in Kant’s Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals, see William W. Sokoloff, “Kant and the Paradox of Respect,” American Journal of Political Science 45:4 (October 2001): 768–779. 84 For Strauss, “the author of the text, when writing it, understood it in one way only”; Rebirth, pp. 209–210.

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dling the authority, inequality and knowledge gospel. The activist reader can easily become the defiant citizen, precisely the person who constantly criticizes and tests democracy and keeps it alive (e.g. connected to the people) through the critical spirit.85 Can the historical context and “meanings extended over time” (Wolin) stabilize the text? Can an act of “reading between the lines” (Strauss) arrest and put an end to the uncontrollable textual dispersion of meaning? Derrida says that the dissemination of meaning is the text’s condition of possibility. Strauss claims “the author of the text, when writing it, understood it in one way only.”86 This is precisely the chain of authority/knowledge that Derrida puts into question and shatters.87 With Derrida, the transmission of a static (or near static) textual meaning and tradition is not at stake. What is at stake is opening a space for readers to challenge received wisdom and thereby reinvent the tradition.88 Derrida thus puts into question the authority, hierarchy and knowledge nexus. My point with all of this is not that we should yell out and say whatever we want about a text. The point is much more important and one that deeply troubled Strauss and Wolin. For Strauss, the problem with the written form was that it was “equally accessible to all who can read.”89 The role of the teacher, for Strauss, is to ascertain who should read certain texts, as well as to secure the meaning and authority of the text. As Strauss insists, “the assumption that the Platonic dialogues do not convey a teaching is absurd.”90 The risk of absurdity is what Strauss must combat for it would undermine the authority of the tradition as well as Strauss’s own authority as a scholar and pedagogue. For Wolin, a text is part of tradition

85 See J. Peter Euben on the “reader-citizen,” in The Tragedy of Political Theory: The Road Not Taken (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990), p. 299. 86 Strauss, Rebirth, pp. 209–210. 87 Does Derrida have something in common with Strauss in terms of textual interpretation?

The answer is no. Derrida has a new concept of tradition and tries to break open new futures for texts. Strauss, in contrast, has an antiquarian interest in classical texts and posits a single textual meaning based on the author’s intention. 88 I concur with Benjamin Barber who states “education for liberty lends itself neither to fixed canons nor to no canon at all. It flourishes with active students, bold teachers, and loose canons.” See Barber, An Aristocracy of Everyone: The Politics of Education and the Future of America (New York: Ballantine Books, 1992), p. 106. 89 Strauss, The City and Man, p. 52. 90 Strauss, The City and Man, p. 51.

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of political discourse. The text speaks to a limited number of concerns. This claim serves to stabilize a text’s meaning. It is not difficult to see the type of teacher that emerges from this position. The teacher must police the meaning of a text and prevent students from straying from the real meaning (just like Strauss). As Wolin puts it: “The theorist enters into a debate the terms of which have largely been set beforehand.”91 Reading a text thus becomes an exercise in accepting specific terms that are set before the reader even starts to read the text. In contrast to Strauss and Wolin, Derrida argues textual meaning (if there is one) cannot be fixed. Hence, the work of reading is never finished. New interpretations of texts are always possible. Reading books with new generations of students thereby becomes a battle of interpretations and an exercise in playful contestation, including the author’s claim to dictate and control the ultimate meaning of the work, as well as the instructor’s authority in trying to dictate the meaning of a text. Contrast this playful aspect pertaining to textual interpretation with Strauss’s somber proclamation that “every complete society necessarily recognizes something about which it is absolutely forbidden to laugh.”92 Given the absolute and unconditional nature of Strauss’s statement prohibiting laughter, I wonder what would happen to a student if she inadvertently laughed at the wrong thing. Laughter, apparently, is incompatible with the authority, hierarchy and knowledge nexus peddled by Strauss. Nevertheless, I call the potentially comical relationship between the author, the text, readers and context fugitive textuality. Fugitive textuality is a joyful anarchistic and utopian moment that undermines authority in the classroom (both the teacher’s and the author of a book) and thereby opens a space of freedom where students can breathe and be creative. As an approach to reading texts, Wolin invokes tradition as a way to set the proper parameters for the “interpreting faculties” and to sustain a clear boundary for the political.93 His position in this regard is essentially defensive. As he puts it, “the tradition of political thought is not so much a tradition of discovery as one of meanings extended over time.”94

91 Wolin, Politics and Vision, p. 21. 92 Strauss, Thoughts on Machiavelli, p. 40. 93 Wolin, Presence of the Past, p. 65. 94 Wolin, Politics and Vision, p. 23.

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Unfortunately, this conception of political theory leads to a form of pedagogy that creates an impenetrable epistemological fortress around the teacher and the text. It prevents discovery and innovation in the name of preserving meanings over time. Similarly, Strauss conceives of political theory pedagogy as working to develop authoritative interpretations of texts by virtue of privileged access to the author’s secret message “written between the lines” that he can deposit into the brains of students. Instead of these authoritarian and stifling approaches, I argue that political theory pedagogy should produce new forms of agency constituted by insubordination, disobedience, dissent and subversion. This new agency would also challenge the “republic of property” (e.g. the claim that the author owns and controls the meaning of a text). This starting point encourages students to read texts carefully and to formulate their own positions while taking risks and making bold arguments. This grounding assumption creates an egalitarian sphere of disputation where students become insurrectionary agents of their own emancipation and enlightenment, not followers of reverential sages in the classroom. Pedagogy emerges as a political practice oriented to human emancipation instead of social control. This approach undermines and challenges the attempt to position students in the classroom as reverential, deferential and docile. The goal is to shatter the authority of texts, traditions and instructors in order to open the possibility of radical pedagogy as the practice of equality. Perhaps Wolin would accuse me of falling into the trap of “overtheorization” and assert that I am promoting a “theoretic form of theory.”95 Strauss would certainly accuse me of abusing philosophy and being unteachable (meaning that I simply refuse to submit to his hegemonic pedagogical program) and therefore he would label me “inhuman.” My response to these charges is simple. The stakes of what I am calling fugitive textuality are ultimately political and pedagogical. As such, they pertain to nothing less than the cultivation of subversive students capable of enacting strategies to reclaim, rebuild and unleash new possibilities for political life. We need to help students think on the margins and potentially even outside of the inherited terms of discourse. We need to help students become fearless and confident in challenging the end of history thesis and anti-utopian rhetoric of the neoliberal order. We need to help students challenge the conversations that are already fixed and conclusions already known before 95 See Wolin, “Political Theory: From Vocation to Invocation,” in Vocations of Political Theory, eds. Frank and Tambornino (2000), pp. 13, 15.

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they even enter the scene. We need to reward students for being militant in their refusal to be initiated into something that preserves the cultural authority of institutions that have served too long as the prime source of the reproduction of ruling elites. If my project turns out to be a form of “over-theorization,” “theoretic theory” and the abuse of philosophy, then I proudly wave these flags. I flat out reject Strauss’s call to “rally around the flag of the Western tradition” because of the radically un-egalitarian baggage, hubris and contempt for democracy that goes along with his appeal.96 To conclude the conclusion, Wolin’s appeal to history and tradition resembles Strauss’s turn to absolute foundations. Even though they are not exactly the same, they ultimately have the same epistemological function. They serve as pedagogical whips that police the boundaries of political theory. Their goal is to protect and preserve political philosophy rightly understood, protect the authority of the teacher, stabilize the meaning of select texts and properly initiate students into the heritage of Western civilization.97 They both have too much reverence for the tradition. As I mentioned at the beginning of this chapter, the grounding assumptions I prefer as parameters for teaching political theory include interpretive freedom, radical egalitarianism and a utopian sensibility as a way to expand, not constrict, the political imagination. The authority, hierarchy and knowledge nexus promoted by Wolin and Strauss must be shattered to open the prospect of radical political theory pedagogy as the practice of equality.

96 Strauss, Rebirth, p. 72. 97 As Barber puts it, “teachers cannot teach the canon properly without provisionally sub-

verting it. Their task is not to transmit the canon but to permit, even to help, their students reinvent it”; see Barber, Aristocracy of Everyone, 1992, p. 215.

CHAPTER 3

Against the Socratic Method

Abstract The Socratic Method (e.g. argumentative questioning, answering and refutation) is a limited and potentially a bad pedagogical practice because it is authoritarian and hierarchical. Often praised as neutral, open and welcoming, I make the case that it is not. The Socratic Method may have a future but it would require what I call the dialectical radicalization of it. This would lead to a greater awareness and sensitivity to the contexts of power pertaining to pedagogy that instructor led forms of the Socratic Method have occluded. Hence, I recover the Socratic Method as a mode of intellectual emancipation based on egalitarianism and challenging all forms of authority, especially the instructors. I connect this to a defense of democracy in the classroom.

Introduction Dialogue, a discursive practice where two or more individuals share their ideas on a subject, give reasons for their views, attentively listen to each other, learn and possibly alter their views, is a defining characteristic of the

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human condition.1 Reasonable dialogue enables democracy.2 If it is correct to say that we have entered an era where ignoring the other’s question, scowling while the other speaks, interrupting the other and talking louder to get one’s point across, then this is an important moment to reflect on power dynamics pertaining to dialogue as a discursive practice. A figure in the history of political thought often viewed as a master of dialogue is Socrates. Socrates questioned everyone, urged his fellow Athenians to reflect on their beliefs and practices and embodied the philosophical principle of self-examination. Over two thousand years after his death, Socrates and the Socratic Method enjoy near unanimous support. According to the “Critical Thinking Community,” the Socratic Method and Socratic teaching is “the oldest, and still the most powerful, teaching tactic for fostering critical thinking. In Socratic teaching we focus on giving students questions, not answers. We model an inquiring, probing mind by continually probing into the subject with questions.”3 In 2017, the Socratic Method was a “theme track” at the American Political Science Association Teaching and Learning conference.4 Clearly, Socrates still enjoys superstar status. He is “the first political philosopher of our great tradition.”5 Socrates is the “leader of all modern enlightenment.”6 Socrates is great because he invented “dissident citizenship.”7 Even Martin Luther King, Jr. and

1 See Aristotle, Politics, trans. C. D. C Reeve (Indianapolis: Hackett Press, 1998). See also Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1958). 2 See Amy Gutmann and Dennis Thompson, Why Deliberative Democracy? (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009). 3 Downloaded on December 31, 2016 from http://www.criticalthinking.org/pages/ socratic-teaching/606. 4 This is the conference blurb pertaining to the Socratic Method: “This theme will explore the Socratic Method in teaching political science and particularly political theory. Proposals might address topics such as the Socratic Method and its purpose in teaching; how was it understood by Plato and other subsequent thinkers; how the Socratic Method is relevant for the classroom; and effective ways to teach the Socratic Method today. Participants will leave with a greater understanding of the Socratic Method, how to implement it, and its pedagogical value” (https://www.apsanet.org/tlc/paperandworkshopthemes). 5 See Leo Strauss, Socrates and Aristophanes (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1966), p. 3. 6 Werner Jaeger, Paideia: The Ideals of Greek Culture, trans. Gilbert Highet (New York: Oxford University Press, 1943), p. 13. 7 See Dana Villa, Socratic Citizenship (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001), p. xi.

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Cornel West praise Socrates.8 Given all of this, a critique of Socrates and the Socratic Method is not likely to fall on receptive ears.9 How could anyone object to dialogue, questioning, self-examination and life-long learning?10 In what follows, I argue that the Socratic Method (e.g. argumentative questioning, answering and refutation) is at best a limited and a bad pedagogical practice. Why? Because it is adversarial, hierarchical and authoritarian, albeit in subtle ways. It is also a practice based on questionable epistemological assumptions about the character of knowledge.11 The Socratic Method, finally, is not a trans-historical practice with universal applicability but privileges certain styles of speech.12 A critique of the Socratic Method is needed because of its popularity with academics and, more importantly, the view that it is a neutral dialogic practice. It also gives us a vantage point to reflect on the “active learning method” which, just like Socrates and his followers, masks its power and control behind proclamations of openness and transparency. In this regard, this chapter connects to the last one because it puts into question the authority, hierarchy and knowledge nexus perpetuated by the Socratic Method. It advances a general theory of radical political theory pedagogy as the practice of equality.

8 See Martin Luther King, Jr., “Letter from a Birmingham Jail,” in Why We Can’t Wait (New York: Signet, 2000), pp. 67–68. See also Cornel West, Democracy Matters: Winning the Fight Against Imperialism (New York: Penguin, 2005). 9 For a defense of Socratic Method‚ see Peter Boghossian, “Socratic Pedagogy: Perplexity, Humiliation, Shame and a Broken Egg,” Educational Philosophy and Theory 44:7 (2012): 710–720; Peter Boghossian, “Socratic Pedagogy, Race, and Power: From People to Propositions,” Education Policy Analysis Archives 10:3. Retrieved on November 15, 2016 from http://epaa.asu.edu/epaa/v10n3.html. See also Anthony G. Rud, Jr., “The Use and Abuse of Socrates in Present Day Teaching,” Education Policy Analysis Archives 5:20. Retrieved on November 15, 2016 from http://epaa.asu.edu/epaa/v5n20.html. For a critique of Socratic Method‚ see Jacques Rancière, The Ignorant Schoolmaster: Five Lessons in Intellectual Emancipation, trans. Ross (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1991), pp. 29, 59. 10 Many college and university administrators also indirectly embrace Socrates via their defense of “active learning.” On the connection between Socratic Method and active learning‚ see Christian Riffel, “The Socratic Method Reloaded: How to Make It Work in Large Classes?” Canterbury Law Review, 2014. 11 See Lani Guinier, Michelle Fine, and Jane Balin, Becoming Gentlemen: Women, Law School, and Institutional Change (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1997), p. 13. 12 For the trans-historical value of Socrates, see Nicholas Tampio, “What if the Pious Don’t Want to Deliberate?” Political Theory 42:1 (2014): 106–118.

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The Myth of Socrates My interpretation of Socrates [469–399 B.C.] gives primacy to Plato’s “Apology” but also identifies relevant moments in other dialogues.13 As the reader may recall, Plato’s “Apology” is an account of a courtroom battle between Socrates and his accusers. Socrates is in court because he has angered prominent individuals in Athens. The legal complaint against Socrates pertains to his incessant questioning of his fellow Athenians about their beliefs, practices and priorities.14 This questioning was set in motion by a rumor that Socrates was a wise man. Chaerephon, who was dead at the time of Socrates’s trial, went to Delphi and asked the god whether anyone was wiser than Socrates. The Pythian priestess replied that no one was. Socrates had always professed that he only knew that he did not know. Confused by the priestess’s statement, Socrates decided to investigate the meaning of the oracle. He did this by questioning prominent individuals in Athens, especially individuals with a reputation for being wise. Young Athenians from prominent families observed. Via precise question and answer sessions, Socrates tied up his interlocutors in words. When asked what he knew, Socrates proclaims that he knows nothing. This infuriated and humiliated his target interlocutor. This went on for decades and made Socrates unpopular. Eventually, he was charged with crimes against the Athenian people. Specifically, he was accused with making the weaker argument beat the stronger, practicing atheism and corrupting the youth of Athens. He had to defend himself in court. Through question and answer, with Socrates asking questions and Meletus answering them, Socrates tries to refute the charges against him. Socrates explains that he dedicated his life to self-examination and the examination of others, one that allows him to distinguish between the good life and life that is not worth living. Do not dedicate yourself to the pursuit of money, Socrates argues, dedicate your life to self-examination and the care of your soul. I am not a criminal. I am the only true patriot, Socrates might say, because I have dedicated my life to the improvement

13 My critique of Socrates is primarily based on Plato’s “Apology” in Plato, The Last Days of Socrates, trans. Tredennick and Tarrant (New York, NY: Penguin, 2003). 14 Plato, “Apology,” p. 45. I privilege Plato’s “Apology” because, as Werner Jaeger puts it, this text is a description of the essence of the work of Socrates in the shortest and plainest form; see Jaeger, Paideia: The Ideals of Greek Culture, vol. 2, p. 37.

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of my fellow citizens. I have chastised them for being stupid and lazy. I am not an atheist. I am on a divine mission. Additionally, I never corrupted anyone. If I did so, it was unintentional. I am not a teacher in any formal sense of the word. I do not earn a salary for what I do. I am poor and dressed in rags. Go ahead and kill me. You will eliminate your sole chance of living a thoughtful life. I am the only one who goads you to reflect on what you are doing. I am a gift to you and this city. Socrates arguably refutes the charges brought against him. Nevertheless, the verdict is guilty as charged. Socrates suggests a punishment for himself. Given that he sacrificed his well-being to care for his fellow citizens, he asks for “free maintenance by the state.”15 The court rejects this proposal. He receives the death penalty. Socrates lashes back: “As soon as I am dead, vengeance shall fall upon you with a punishment far more painful than your killing of me.”16 In Crito, Socrates is urged to escape to avoid death. He refuses and accepts his death sentence with serenity. Over two thousand years later, Socrates is required reading for nearly all university students. He is a model citizen, philosopher and educator.17 He was a martyr for truth, goaded his fellow citizens to live well and he refused to abandon philosophy as a form of dialogic engagement with others. Socrates becomes a legend and myth. His legacy is the Socratic Method. It is important to point out that the Socratic Method is difficult to define. Socrates does not have a fixed style of questioning in all of Plato’s dialogues.18 Nevertheless, drawing on what I recounted from Plato’s “Apology,” the Socratic Method is a process of question and answer.19 The 15 Plato, “Apology,” p. 65. 16 Plato, “Apology,” p. 68. 17 For Socrates as a model philosopher‚ see Dana Villa, Socratic Citizenship (Princeton, NJ:

Princeton University Press, 2001). For Socrates as a model for living‚ see Alexander Nehamas, The Art of Living: Socratic Reflections from Plato to Foucault (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2000). For Socrates as an advocate of active as opposed to passive learning‚ see Martha Nussbaum, Not for Profit: Why Democracy Needs the Humanities (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2010). 18 For the complications involved with Socrates, see Gregory Vlastos, Socrates: Ironist and Moral Philosopher (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1991). 19 For a variety of ways to interpret and practice Socratic education‚ see Jordan Fuller, “‘Listen Then, or Rather, Answer’: Contemporary Challenges to Socratic Education,” Educational Theory 65:1 (2015): 53–71. See also Peter Boghossian, “The Socratic Method (or, Having a Right to Get Stoned),” Teaching Philosophy 25:4 (December 2002).

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Socratic Method keeps argumentative dialogue focused. Terms are defined, examples are given, critique is offered and a conclusion is reached. Ultimately, the point is to undermine and expose fallacies in the argument of one’s interlocutor via elenchus (e.g. logical refutation) in order to encourage them to rethink what they think they know, to question their assumptions and to pursue continued study.

Critique of Socrates and the Socratic Method I am skeptical about the Socratic Method as a pedagogical practice for a number of reasons. First, Socrates is always in charge during the dialogues. He controls the question and answer sessions. At times, the dialogues seem more like exercises in continually reaching agreement and being silenced by Socrates.20 Calling something a dialogue does not necessarily make it one, especially given the pedantic character of the intellectual exchanges between Socrates and many of his interlocutors. Because Socrates is always in charge of the discussion, the Socratic Method in the classroom can mask a top-down model of learning with the professor on top, students on the bottom, the instructor asking the questions, students answering them.21 The Socratic Method should be deployed playfully where the roles between student and instructor are inverted or at least not stuck in a hierarchical dialogic structure. This might make the more laudable aspects of self-discovery and non-directive inquiry possible. Second, Socrates often embarrassed, humiliated and ironically mocked others. When rationality fails to persuade, Socrates resorts to other means and tries to shame his interlocutors into agreement. This is apparent in some of the heated exchanges in “Apology” and in Plato’s Republic and Gorgias.22 True, a conversation with Socrates may end with perplexity (e.g. aporia). However, it could also end with embarrassment and silence.23

20 This is especially the case in Plato’s, Republic, trans. Grube and Reeve (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Press, 1992). 21 As Guinar et al. put it, “Socratic method is employed to intimidate or to establish a hierarchy within large classes” (p. 50). 22 Plato, Gorgias, trans. Walter Hamilton and Chris Emlyn-Jones (New York: Penguin, 2004), 471d. 23 For embarrassment (e.g. Thrasymachus blushing) and then silence resulting from an encounter with Socrates, see Book I of Plato’s Republic, trans. Grube and Reeve (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Press, 1992). See also the exchanges between Socrates, Polus and Callicles in

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Even if some individuals deserve to be humiliated because they are arrogant, this still illustrates a lack of the type of empathy needed for good pedagogical practice.24 I doubt that students would be willing participants if they knew the point of a Socratic exchange is to dissolve their beliefs and reveal their ignorance publically. Students should know this before they enter into Socratic exchange. To be fair, it is important to point out that Socrates denied that he was a teacher. Perhaps this absolves him of having to explain what the result of an intellectual exchange with him would be. Educators should be more transparent about this since they usually do not deny that they are teachers. Third, Socrates is not always the embodiment of detached and objective pure reason but loses his cool. In a manner similar to how Mr. Brett Kavanaugh acted while questioned about allegations of sexual assault during confirmation hearings, Socrates gets belligerent and lashes out at the court.25 Specifically, Socrates vows revenge against the city he proclaims to love: “As soon as I am dead, vengeance shall fall upon you with a punishment far more painful than your killing of me.”26 As opposed to lashing out at the court and his city, I would recommend that Socrates keep his cool and have a bit more patience with the procedural-deliberative process. After all, Socrates is not afraid of death. Perhaps laughter at his death sentence would be the more appropriate response.27 In this instance, Socrates lacks playfulness and is hostile and resentful. It is also important to point out that Socrates’s guilty verdict indicates many different things. It illustrates the failure of rational dialogue to persuade the jury. It also indicates that Socrates may have done a poor job of teaching the jury. As he states, he is unable to speak in the manner that is typical in courtrooms. Even though he seems quite comfortable engaging

Plato’s Gorgias, trans. Hamilton and Emlyn-Jones (New York, NY: Penguin, 2004), 471d. For related themes‚ see Peter Boghossian, “Socratic Pedagogy: Perplexity, Humiliation, Shame and a Broken Egg,” Educational Philosophy and Theory 44:7 (2012). 24 For a defense of compassion as a mode of pedagogy‚ see Gregory Boyle, Tattoos on the Heart: The Power of Boundless Compassion (New York, NY: Free Press, 2010). For a defense of the modesty intrinsic to Socratic Method‚ see Theodore Christou, “Satan or Socrates: The Perils of Excessive Pride in Pedagogy,” Encounters in Education 9 (Fall 2008): 175–181. 25 Mr. Brett Kavanaugh was arguably more belligerent during his hearing than was Socrates. 26 Plato, Apology, p. 68. 27 See Plato, “Crito,” in Plato: The Last Days of Socrates, trans. Tredennick and Tarrant

(New York, NY: Penguin, 2003).

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in verbal battle with his accusers, he states that he is “a complete stranger to language of this place.”28 Additionally, the guilty verdict seems to be a result of Socrates’s own inflexibility and self-righteousness. “Confident as I am in the justice of my cause,” as he puts it.29 Socrates’ words contradict Dana Villa’s claim that Socrates is “the enemy of all forms of selfrighteousness.”30 During his trial, Socrates is inflexible and self-righteous. Socrates is unwilling to employ a variety of pedagogical devices as learning tools for the jury. Specifically, he refuses to get close to the syntax of his audience and states that he will speak “in the first words that come to me.”31 What is the lesson for educators? If a majority of students do poorly on an assignment and fail to grasp a difficult concept (analogous to Socrates failing to persuade the jury), it strikes me as a mistake to blame the students and to persist doing the same thing. Effective teaching requires selfcritique, flexibility and a willingness to change. We need to learn about our students and be willing to speak in a syntax they understand. Assuming that the power of analytical and rational propositions is universal and transhistorical, as Peter Boghossian claims, strikes me as rigid and myopic.32 In the case of Socrates, this led to his guilty verdict. In addition to employing a fixed method, when Socrates impatiently lashes out at the jury (because he is astonished that reason alone did not persuade), this is the wrong approach. Fourth, Socrates employed words in a zero-sum competitive game. This can undermine trust and solidarity. In just about all of the dialogues, Socrates is the winner (even if many dialogues end in perplexity). This sort of adversarial model puts a premium on aggressive speech and downplays

28 Plato, “Apology,” p. 40. 29 Plato, “Apology,” p. 39. 30 See Villa, Socratic Citizenship, 2001, p. 4. 31 Plato, “Apology,” p. 39. 32 On the benefits of a culturally relevant curriculum‚ see Tyrone C. Howard, “Culturally Relevant Pedagogy: Ingredients for Critical Teacher Reflection,” Theory into Practice 42:3 (2003). See also Gloria Ladson-Billings, “Toward a Theory of Culturally Relevant Pedagogy,” American Educational Research Journal 32:3 (1995): 465–491; Barry A. Osborne, “Practice into Theory into Practice: Culturally Relevant Pedagogy for Students We Have Marginalized and Normalized,” Anthropology & Education Quarterly 27:3 (1996): 285–414. For Boghossian’s claim‚ see “The Socratic Method (or, Having a Right to Get Stoned),” Teaching Philosophy 25:4 (2002): 355.

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the importance of listening.33 Peter Boghossian argues “there is no winner and there is no loser in a genuine Socratic discourse.”34 I disagree given the intensely competitive and glory-oriented character of Athenian culture during Socrates’ life. In the Athenian city-state, the point was to win and vanquish one’s opponent publically. If you are exposed as ignorant then you lost the dialogue. Socrates was engaged in a fierce struggle with poets and rhetoricians as to who was the best educator of Athenian citizens. This sort of competitive approach is not always a good fit in the classroom. Competition creates a hostile zero-sum atmosphere, where verbally aggressive male students shine, but where students who are not accustomed to and are uncomfortable with aggressive argumentation will be left behind. As Lani Guinier et al. claim in Becoming Gentlemen, the Socratic classroom characteristic of American law schools sets up “few winners and many losers.”35 The Socratic Method is not a neutral practice. A neutral communication style does not exist. Communication styles differ in terms of social class, race and gender. Research demonstrates that white, masculine and aggressive communicative styles constitute an invisible norm, one widely accepted as neutral.36 Because Peter Boghossian sees the Socratic Method as having little to do with people and much more with propositions, the Socratic Method for him is the “ultimate form of racial and gender egalitarianism.”37 Boghossian fails to acknowledge the problem of exclusion as well as the more troubling fact that, as Lynn M. Sanders puts it, “some people might be ignored no matter how good their reasons are.”38 This is a troubling aspect pertaining to communication. Ignoring it would violate the principle of communicative equality. Educational institutions as 33 For the displacement of listening as a democratic practice‚ see Susan Bickford, The Dissonance of Democracy: Listening, Conflict, Citizenship (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1996). 34 Peter Boghossian, “The Socratic Method (or, Having a Right to Get Stoned),” Teaching Philosophy 25:4 (December 2002): 352. 35 See Guinier et al., p. 60. For Boghossian, “race and gender play less a role in a Socratic

discourse” in comparison to other dialogical contexts. See Boghossian, “Socratic Pedagogy, Race, and Power: From People to Propositions,” Education Policy Analysis Archives 10:3 (January 2002): 3. 36 See Amanda Carlin, “The Courtroom as White Space: Racial Performance as Noncredibility,” UCLA Law Review 450 (2016). For Carlin, “women of color are at the bottom of the credibility hierarchy” (p. 476). 37 Peter Boghossian, “The Socratic Method (or, Having a Right to Get Stoned),” Teaching Philosophy 25:4 (2002): 355. 38 See Lynn M. Sanders, “Against Deliberation,” Political Theory 25:3 (1997): 354.

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the premier site for the Socratic Method would then serve an ideological function. That is, they will privilege those accustomed to aggressive verbal interaction, as opposed to giving everyone a chance to succeed. Ironically, educators will pat themselves on the back for a job well done in the face of their complicity with educational injustice. We need to realize that “schools are venues where intersecting power relations of race, class, gender, sexuality, nationality, ethnicity, ability and age routinely privilege some students over others.”39 Fifth, there is a subtle form of violence inherent to the Socratic Method. Socrates baits the other, sets the hook and then thrashes his victims in all directions until their intellectual guts fly out. He plays a word game involving definition, classification and reduction of arguments to absurdity.40 Soren Kierkegaard refers to this aspect of Socratic dialogue as a form of “squeezing.”41 Socrates seems to know the answers to the questions he is asking but acts as if he does not know. This sets up a power/knowledge relationship in a dialogue.42 After the first student’s views are squeezed and then popped via the Socratic Method, the risk is that other students will “avoid serious conversation with the teacher altogether.”43 This sort of disengagement is precisely what happens to Thrasymachus (cf. Republic) and to Callicles (cf. Gorgias ).44 In Book I of the Republic, Thrasymachus and Socrates lock horns because they have incompatible definitions of justice. Thrasymachus ultimately gives up and listens while Socrates plays his game of question and answer with Glaucon and Adeimantus nodding in agreement. In the Gorgias, Callicles ultimately tunes out and gives up on the discussion. 39 See Patricia Hill Collins and Sirma Bilge, Intersectionality (Malden, MA: Polity Press, 2016), p. 165. 40 In Plato’s Symposium, Alcibiades compares the impact of Socrates to a reptile bite. In Plato’s “Apology,” Socrates compares himself to a stinging fly. 41 See Soren Kierkegaard, The Concept of Irony: With Continual Reference to Socrates, ed.

and trans. Hong and Hong (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1989), p. 45. 42 For Peter Boghossian, “Socratic pedagogy confuses, and to an extent even inverts traditional power relations” in Boghossian, “Socratic Pedagogy, Race, and Power: From People to Propositions,” Education Policy Analysis Archives 10:3 (January 2002): 4. 43 See Daniel Pekarsky, “Socratic Teaching: A Critical Assessment,” Journal of Moral Education 23:2 (1994): 10. 44 See, in particular, Gorgias 497c, 501c, and 505d: “I don’t understand your quibbles, Socrates.” “Oh yes, you do, Callicles; only it suits you to feign ignorance.” See also Plato’s Republic, Book 1, where Thrasymachus is reduced to silence.

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Seen in this light, Socrates risks corrupting the minds of others, and stultifying them, as Jacques Rancière argues, by making them dependent on his argumentative expertise and positioning them, to put it oxymoronically, as passive participants.45 I would add, though, that in addition to stultifying minds, followers of Socrates also risk silencing the individuals they are trying to get to speak. In the classroom, the Socratic Method will empower individuals who dominate discussions and it will marginalize others.46 If issues pertaining to power and privilege in the classroom are ignored (e.g. attention to who speaks and who remains silent), instructors armed with the Socratic Method will be unaware of their role in perpetuating marginalization and exclusion.47 Sixth, Socrates claims that he only knows that he knows nothing. As Socrates puts it, “I have no claim to wisdom.”48 This is problematic because it positions Socrates as invulnerable, sovereign and untouchable. Via the clever deployment of irony, Socrates becomes the ultimate authority figure who knows nothing but can refute everything while never being subject to refutation himself. According to David Corey, “Socrates’ Delphic wisdom of his own ignorance recommends itself for the way it opens Socrates up to his fellow citizens with whom he converses.”49 I disagree. Socratic ignorance does not open him up to his fellow citizens. It shuts him down. First, it is logically impossible to have knowledge of one’s ignorance. If you know what you do not know, then you know something, namely, that you do not know anything. At moments like this, Socrates’s style of thinking is arguably a mystifying and counter-productive word game. For this reason, it would be a mistake to confuse this sort of ironic deployment of discursive negativity as openness. Secondly, perpetually reducing arguments to self-contradiction and absurdity does not open up Socrates to his fellow citizens. In fact, Socrates’s argumentative style during intellec45 Jacques Rancière states: “The Socratic method represents the most formidable form of stultification. The Socratic method of interrogation that pretends to lead the student to his own knowledge is in fact the method of a riding-school master”; see The Ignorant Schoolmaster, 1991, p. 59. 46 See Sanders, “Against Deliberation,” 1997. 47 For Guinier et al., “Many women and people of color are reluctant partners in the Socratic

exchange” (p. 91). 48 Plato, “Apology,” p. 44. 49 See David D. Corey, “Socratic Citizenship and the Divine Sign,” The Review of Politics

67 (Spring 2005): 228.

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tual exchanges engendered hatred. In my view, teachers need to be more honest and transparent with students about what they claim to know and what they do in the classroom especially pertaining to their role perpetually undermining arguments. This type of honesty and transparency would build trust. Trust creates a productive learning environment with higher levels of student participation. Seventh, Socrates was hostile to the other because he sought to undermine the other’s argument. As he states, he discovered that “the people with the greatest reputations [for wisdom] were almost entirely deficient.”50 He sets out on his divine mission, questions people and achieves the same selfserving and arguably boring result day after day. That is, Socrates learned that most people think they know something but they do not know anything. As opposed to the obsession with undermining the weakest component of someone’s argument, the better approach in the classroom would be to build on the most creative, original and strongest part of what a person has to say, even if it is not the “right” answer the instructor might have been hoping to hear. This requires intellectual modesty, compassion and kindness. These traits are crucial for building a supportive learning environment. Socrates’s obsession with analytical reasoning that seeks to undermine the other’s argument via the acid bath of elenchus risks creating a counter-productive space of rational annihilation. Interestingly, rational annihilation and argumentation for sport are themes in Book VII of Plato’s Republic and flagged as a danger to philosophy. As the reader may recall, Book VII is one of the high points of Western philosophy where Plato presents the allegory of the cave to illustrate what the lack of knowledge looks like. In this same story, he also describes the dangers faced by anyone who lives the life of the mind and tries to converse with common people. After Plato concludes the allegory of the cave and moves on to discuss other themes in Book VII, Socrates states the following: When young people get their first taste of argument they misuse it by treating it as a kind of game of contradiction. They imitate those who’ve refuted them by refuting others themselves, and, like puppies, they enjoy dragging and tearing those around them with their arguments.

Socrates continues: 50 Plato, “Apology,” p. 45.

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When they’ve refuted many and been refuted by them in turn, they forcefully and quickly fall into disbelieving what they believed before. And, as a result, they themselves and the whole of philosophy are discredited in the eyes of others.51

With Socrates, the problem was not that he plunged into disbelief and skepticism via games of argumentation and contradiction but that he enjoyed dragging and tearing those around him with his arguments and justified this as a “divine mission.” Socrates claimed that “god has assigned me to this city” and that he was a gift from god.52 His arrogance undermined the possibility of intellectual communion, irritated others and potentially discredited philosophy. Eighth, the Socratic Method perpetuates questionable epistemological assumptions about the character of knowledge. These assumptions position Socrates as a sovereign lord of the universe.53 For Socrates, knowledge is the result of logic. It floats above and is independent of a particular social and historical context.54 To get to pure knowledge, one must strip away remnants of the material world that lead to distortions, fallacies, competing perspectives and contradictory propositions. At least as depicted in the Republic, the “Form of the Good” provides Socrates with a metaphysical grounding for knowledge and an incontestable basis for thought and action. Via the realm of eternity as the ultimate measure, the illusory stability of the empirical world is shattered. As Nietzsche puts it in his critique of Socrates in The Birth of Tragedy, Socrates armed with reason penetrates into the deepest abysses and makes everything about human existence “comprehensible and thus justified.”55 A better epistemological starting point would presuppose equality as opposed to hierarchy in levels of understanding. It would be more modest about the power of reason as opposed to casting reason and logic in

51 Plato, Republic, trans. Grube and Reeve (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Press, 1992), 539a–c. 52 Plato, “Apology,” p. 57. 53 For the political significance of epistemological assumptions‚ see João Paraskeva, Con-

flicts in Curriculum Theory: Challenging Hegemonic Epistemologies (New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011). 54 For a defense of Socratic ideals, see Nicholas Tampio, “What if the Pious Don’t Want to Deliberate?” Political Theory 42:1 (2014): 106–118. 55 Friedrich Nietzsche, Birth of Tragedy, trans. Walter Kaufmann (New York, NY: Vintage Books, 1967), p. 96.

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missionary-imperialistic terms. It would pay attention to the contexts of power within which knowledge claims emerge. It would acknowledge the validity of competing claims to knowledge. It would start from the assumption that the human mind cannot escape a socio-cultural perspective (e.g. cave) that one did not choose and that one might not even be aware that one has.56 These more modest assumptions strike me as the sort of preconditions that lead to greater openness and enable dialogic exchange. Informing others that they are stuck in the cave of shadows and only have opinions as opposed to true knowledge is a counter-productive assumption. Additionally, the point should never be to construct an impenetrable epistemological fortress around oneself but to subject all starting points to critique and strategically employ a variety of perspectives to make an informed argument. Becoming stuck in any one epistemological position (e.g. materialist, idealist, realist, historicist, empiricist, post-modern, etc.) would be just as problematic as getting stuck in the Socratic epistemological cul-de-sac that casts analytical reasoning as a panacea. The difference between how these two competing epistemologies—one based on an incontestable metaphysical foundation that grounds knowledge; the other based on keeping a space open for competing perspectives and plurality— would play out in the classroom is obvious. The former creates a classroom environment ruled according to the principle of aggressive rationalism where there is little space for dissent. In the classroom characterized by aggressive rationalism, poets and sophists must become philosophers and justify what they do in philosophical terms.57 In contrast to a classroom ruled according to a hierarchical epistemological foundation, the instructor that acknowledges the competing ways knowledge is constructed would create a welcoming and plural classroom environment, with flexible lines of authority, greater participation, inclusion, spontaneity and openness to interpretive possibilities. Reasoned and principled dissent would be encouraged and rewarded. Students might even be encouraged to take over the classroom. Instructors could encourage

56 On these and related themes‚ see Michel Foucault, Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings, 1972–1977, ed. Gordon, trans. Gordon et al. (New York, NY: Vintage Books, 1980). See Karl Mannheim, Ideology and Utopia: An Introduction to the Sociology of Knowledge, trans. Wirth and Shils (New York, NY: Harcourt, Brace, & World, Inc., 1936); Friedrich Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals, trans. Kaufmann and Hollingdale (New York, NY: Vintage Books, 1989). 57 Plato, The Republic, pp. 264–292.

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students to overthrow the authoritarian Socratic pedagogue and take responsibility for their own education. Students would thus have a chance of becoming conscious of “the equality of intellectual capacity.”58 What I am proposing as an alternative to the Socratic teacher is a type of educator who always keeps her critical eye on the contexts of power that condition what can take place in the classroom in terms of who speaks and who is silent. Additionally, it matters who has been allowed to physically enter the university and on what and whose terms.59 Ultimately, I am not rejecting Socrates but trying to recover the Socratic Method as a practice of dissent, that is, a way of putting the authority, hierarchy and knowledge nexus into question, and being skeptical of any claim, but doing so in ways that keep in mind broader contexts of power. Perhaps the most important aspect that students should learn about Socrates was that his mission was self-authorized. Socrates took it upon himself to challenge the validity of the oracle (e.g. question its authority) and find out for himself whether it was indeed true that he was the wisest. Through his skeptical mindset, he dedicated his life to investigating the veracity of an authoritative source of knowledge. Our students should be encouraged to do the same. Less Socratic Method and more collaboration, mentoring, empowerment with and between students is the way to transform the classroom into a critical and utopian force for social and political transformation.

Refutation of Objections Peter Boghossian defends the intrinsic egalitarianism of Socratic pedagogy and claims that Socratic pedagogy is about rational propositions and not the particular people making the arguments. For him, “who physically gets to be in the classroom is not immediately relevant to Socratic pedagogy.”60

58 Rancière, 1991, p. 27. 59 For data on the changing demographic of university students‚ see William J. Hussar

and Tabitha M. Bailey, Projections of Education Statistics to 2021 (NCES 2013-008). U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics (Washington, DC: U.S., 2013). Government Printing Office. This report projects significant increases in AfricanAmerican and Latino/a student college enrollment (25 and 40%) while enrollment for white students will slightly increase (4%). 60 Peter Boghossian, “Socratic Pedagogy, Race, and Power: From People to Propositions,” Education Policy Analysis Archives 10:3 (January 2002): 2.

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He may be partially correct on this point but we need to remember that educational access and privilege implied by who attends the university and how they get there reflects reigning power relations.61 The individualistic discourse of merit mystifies these relations. We also need to entertain the possibility that the Socratic Method might fail to serve the full range of students attending the university because of its valorization of an aggressive and masculinist mode of verbal sparring.62 The ruthless Socrates I have depicted here is not a caricature. Socratic arrogance, self-righteousness, analytical destructiveness and rough handling of interlocutors are apparent at many critical moments in the dialogues. To the extent that these aspects inform the Socratic Method, students deserve better treatment. In the classroom, students may have not chosen to be there (e.g. it is a required course) and instructors have the added power of grade giving. In many of the Platonic dialogues, Socrates engages someone that he wants to engage. That is to say, there is a qualitative difference between the dialogues (at least as depicted by Plato) and how the Socratic Method takes place in the classroom where students pour in, take a seat and hope to survive the ensuing boredom. Hence, instructors should be gentle, kind and modest at least in comparison to Socrates. Perhaps there is nothing intrinsically bad and humiliating about the Socratic Method. If there are bad effects from it, this has more to do with the personality of the instructor and the particular classroom environment that they foster, not the Socratic Method. Clearly, any pedagogical technique in the hands of bad teachers will lead to bad outcomes. However, the Socratic Method is difficult to separate from the annoying and bristly personality of Socrates. Finally, many of Plato’s dialogues exhibit collaborative modes of investigation on questions like justice, love and piety. Does this complicate my claim that Socratic Method is unnecessarily adversarial? It does not. Educators should try to see the Socratic Method from the eyes of students. What might seem like collaboration for instructors might not feel like 61 See Jerome Karabel, The Chosen: The Hidden History of Admission and Exclusion at Harvard, Yale, and Princeton (New York, NY: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2005). 62 See recent feminist critiques of Socratic Method including Susan H. Williams, “Legal Education, Feminist Epistemology, and the Socratic Method,” Stanford Law Review 45 (1993): 1571–1576; Lani Guinier, Michelle Fine, and Jane Balin, Becoming Gentlemen: Women, Law School, and Institutional Change (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1997). See also David D. Garmer, “Socratic Misogyny? Analyzing Feminist Criticisms of Socratic Teaching in Legal Education,” BYU Law Review 4 (2000): 1579–1650.

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collaboration from the vantage point of students. It may be true to say that Socrates invented a mode of dissident philosophical citizenship. For Dana Villa, it is one based on dissent and saying no.63 I think this is a reasonable interpretation but I would like to be able to practice this form of dissident citizenship and say no to aspects of Socrates that strike me as counter-productive. The arrogant and adversarial style of Socrates is not a form of intellectual collaboration. However, I am not out to condemn Socrates. Benjamin Barber claims that Socrates is a “dubious model for teaching in democratic polity.”64 I disagree. There are aspects to Socrates and the Socratic Method that strike me as indispensable for democratic citizenship and education including ceaseless self-examination, the cultivation of discerning judgment and intellectual modesty. Benjamin Barber, who I have favorably cited earlier in this book, gets this one wrong and misses the value of certain aspects of Socrates as a teacher.

Conclusion When we talk about justice, equality and freedom, we must define our terms. Asking questions also seems praiseworthy. This prevents misunderstandings and ensures that there is a basic level of agreement at the outset of a conversation. Living a life of self-examination is also a good aspiration that leads to self-improvement. I have demonstrated, however, that these non-objectionable aspects to the Socratic Method are only a part of his legacy. It is important to acknowledge the contexts of power within which the Socratic Method takes place. In this sense, the Socratic Method is in need of dialectical radicalization, inversion and reconceptualization. The unreflective deployment of the Socratic Method can reproduce an unjust and hierarchical social order and mystify the ways in which teachers are complicit with this injustice. First-generation college students of color, women and poor people sometimes remain silent in the classroom. This is not the result of a culture of low achievement but pertains to structural disadvantage. Viewing the out-spoken children of university educated professionals as superior and academically gifted (and non-traditional students as

63 Dana Villa, Socratic Citizenship (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001). 64 See Benjamin Barber, An Aristocracy of Everyone: The Politics of Education and the Future

of America (New York: Ballantine Books, 1992), p. 186.

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apathetic and disengaged) perpetuates privilege, perpetuates the marginalization of previously under-served groups and allows educators to wrap themselves in the seemingly egalitarian robes of Socratic dialectic.65 The Socratic Method refigured as challenging authority and subverting hierarchy leads to a more egalitarian and better educational experience for all students. Students assume greater responsibility for their own education and take greater joy in it. I support the Socratic Method and active learning method only to the extent that they shatter the authority, hierarchy and knowledge nexus, not perpetuate it.

65 For these and related themes‚ see Victor M. Rios, Punished: Policing the Lives of Black and Latino Boys (New York, NY: New York University Press, 2011). See also Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis, Schooling in Capitalist America: Educational Reform and the Contradictions of Economic Life (New York, NY: Basic Books, 1976). See Jonathan Kozol, Savage Inequalities: Children in America’s Schools (New York, NY: Harper Perennial, 1992).

CHAPTER 4

Teaching Political Theory at a Prison in South Texas

Abstract Taking students to a local prison for a field trip is an effective way to engage students on issues central to democratic citizenship. Even if some students opt out of the voluntary prison visit, a field trip to a prison creates a vibrant learning environment where students can share their experience with other classmates as well as reflect on their experiences with authority figures. The visit to the prison also disrupts power relationships between student/instructor because all prison field-trip participants are inmates for a day. This chapter puts into question the authority, hierarchy and knowledge nexus via experiential learning and constitutes a contribution to a general theory of radical political theory pedagogy as the practice of equality.

Introduction As I look back on my experience in public schools, one experience stands out. When I was in the 8th grade, I visited Folsom Prison on a weekend school organized field trip as part of a visit to Sacramento, California. I remember the experience with vivid detail. I saw an inmate sweeping the

An earlier version of “Teaching Political Theory at a Prison in South Texas” appeared in PS: Political Science and Politics 47 (2014): 518–522.

© The Author(s) 2020 W. W. Sokoloff, Political Science Pedagogy, Critical Political Theory and Radical Practice, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-23831-5_4

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area near the entrance to the prison. I recall his somber facial expression and slumped shoulders. I recall the razor wire, the thick brick walls, observation towers and the armed guards. The massive character of the prison was unforgettable. The teachers who accompanied us did not say anything about the prison including why we were visiting it. I am nonetheless grateful for having had the opportunity to visit Folsom Prison. I decided to continue the tradition of taking students to prison now that I am a teacher. I took a group of approximately 30 of my students to Reynoldo V. Lopez State Jail in Edinburg, Texas. Why take university students to a jail, you ask? All instructors are committed to student learning but there is dispute about how to accomplish this. Should instructors lecture and use power point since this is the most efficient way to cover quantity?1 For me, the answer is no. Pedagogical variety and experiential learning brings course material to life. Lecture and power point kill it. My experience teaching indicates that students are interested in politics and big theoretical questions but the reading material, activities, and class discussions need to be relevant to their lives. Research demonstrates that it is desirable to engage students in community and other activities outside of school and integrate experiential learning into the classroom.2 This chapter is thus a contribution to the practical side of my general theory of radical political theory pedagogy. It formulates a mode of critical pedagogy as the subversion of hierarchy and practice of equality via experiential learning. Taking students to a prison on a field trip enhances the learning experience in politics and political theory courses in valuable ways. The U.S. has the largest prison population in the world.3 This is a fact rendered

1 See Mariya Y. Omelicheva and Olga Avdeyeva, “Teaching with Lecture or Debate? Testing the Effectiveness of Traditional Versus Active Learning Methods of Instruction,” PS: Political Science and Politics 41 (2008): 603–607. 2 See John Halliday, “Political Liberalism and Citizenship Education: Towards Curriculum Reform,” British Journal of Educational Studies 47 (1999): 34–55. See also Raymond J. Wlodkowski, Enhancing Adult Motivation to Learn: A Comprehensive Guide for Teaching All Adults (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2008). 3 For data on this as well as other themes pertaining to mass incarceration in the U.S., see Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in an Age of Colorblindness (New York: The New Press, 2012); Angela Y. Davis, Are Prisons Obsolete? (New York: Seven Stories Press, 2003); Baz Dreisinger, Incarceration Nations: A Journey to Justice in Prisons Around the World (New York: Other Press, 2016); Marie Gottschalk, Caught: The Prison State and the Lockdown of American Politics (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2015); Todd R. Clear,

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invisible by the geographical isolation of many prisons and minimal public discussion of mass incarceration in the U.S. Therefore, taking students to a prison can be a first step to learn more about mass incarceration and start a dialogue about why the U.S. imprisons more of its own people than any other country. From a pedagogical perspective, taking students to a prison creates a student-centered learning environment where students can use a personal experience to connect theory with practice and discuss the issues that are important to them. It is also a way to put oneself in a new and unfamiliar situation. This adds unpredictability and excitement into the learning process and heightens visceral dimensions of learning. Additionally, the prison visit potentially levels the playing field between instructors and students (e.g. subverts hierarchy) since all participants are inmates for a day. Visiting a prison can also transform the way we see prisons and prison inmates and thereby acquire a deeper understanding of both. For example, students learn that prisons are places where people live and that inmates are actual human beings.4 Based on my experience teaching at a variety of educational institutions, first-generation and/or non-traditional students particularly enjoy prison field trips.5 This chapter connects to the two previous ones insofar as it foregrounds the importance of student voice and making courses relevant to students. It continues the theme of disrupting the authority, hierarchy and knowledge nexus that grounds traditional pedagogy. It goes further than the previous ones by including an off campus site as a space for the practice of equality.

The Challenge The largest Hispanic Serving Institution (HSI) in Texas, the University of Texas, Pan American (UTPA) [now called UTRGV] is located approximately 15 miles from the U.S./Mexico border in Edinburg, Texas. At the time of the prison visit I recount in this chapter, UTPA had a student population of approximately 19,000, served mainly first-generation university Imprisoning Communities: How Mass Incarceration Makes Disadvantaged Neighborhoods Worse (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007); and Katherine Beckett, Making Crime Pay: Law and Order in Contemporary American Politics (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997). 4 I thank Renée Heberle for a conversation pertaining to these issues. 5 While I was an instructor at a satellite campus at CUC, I arranged a field trip with my

students to the prison complex located in Lompoc, California.

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students, and had a predominantly Latin@ student population (88.7%), many of whom have not been adequately prepared to succeed at the university. It is important to note that the Rio Grande Valley is one of the poorest metropolitan areas in the U.S. with a low high school completion rate and a high teenage pregnancy rate. Many of the students are English language learners from economically disadvantaged backgrounds. Additionally, many of the students work part- or full-time jobs and have family responsibilities that may involve taking care of a child, parent, grandparent, sibling and other relatives. Many students also commute to UTPA from long distances and some of these students are Mexican nationals delayed at border crossing stations. Many UTPA students lack basic academic skills, tend to underestimate themselves academically and have limited experience traveling outside the Rio Grande Valley. Additionally, the student faculty ratio at UTPA is 25:1, one of the highest among state universities, making it difficult for faculty to provide optimum attention to the particular needs of students. South Texas primary and secondary education based on “teaching to the test” has left many of our students unprepared for critical and analytical thinking, argumentation and intellectual synthesis skills.6 Given the complicated character of the lives of the students and their lack of preparation to succeed at the university level, this translates into poor academic performance that goes far beyond the structural-institutional factors discussed by Richard Arum and Josipa Roska they believe account for limited learning on university campuses.7 Even among political science majors at UTPA, students have a difficult time writing argumentative essays, can be fearful about challenging even a weak argument and adopt a passive and uncritical mindset in relation to the reading material. Additionally, the failure rate for introductory U.S. and Texas Government and Politics courses offered to about 5000 students per academic year is approximately 30%, a matter of great concern to faculty and administrators. The ways in which Latin@s are portrayed in mainstream American

6 See Louis Volante, “Teaching to the Test: What Every Educator and Policy-Maker Should Know,” Canadian Journal of Educational Administration and Policy 35 (2004): 1–7. Teaching to the test limits the ability of teachers to address the specific educational needs of their students, arguably kills the imagination and takes the joy out of learning. 7 Richard Arum and Josipa Roska, Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011).

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government texts may play a part in accounting for this problem.8 My goal in this chapter is to join the dialogue on what faculty can do to stimulate greater student interest in course material among a historically under-served student population. I argue that taking students on a field trip to a prison is an effective strategy for creating a vibrant student-centered learning environment where students can discuss the issues that are important to them. It injects joy and risk into the learning process. Visiting the prison with students is also a way to cultivate a utopian sensibility that involves staring into the abyss and then reflecting on ways we might create a world without a prison industrial complex.

Pedagogical Theory The question I am constantly asking myself pertains to my students. How can I engage and motivate my students to succeed?9 To answer this question, I have had to rethink what it means to teach. As J. Peter Euben puts it, “how one teaches may be as ‘substantive’ as what one teaches.”10 I also realized that I needed to read scholarship on how to best work with historically under-served populations. In this regard, one of my colleagues recommended that I read a book by Paulo Freire. I took this advice and was glad that I did. In Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Paulo Freire presents two conflicting conceptions of education. The standard form, which Freire calls the “banking model,” rests on the assumption that teachers should transmit “knowledge” to students. According to this model, students have brains but their brains are empty. Empty brains need wisdom and course material via lecture and tests. Freire opposes this approach and labels it an education in submission, subjugation and subordination. As Freire puts it, the oppressor educator “decrees the ignorance of someone else” from a position of superiority.11 This approach

8 See Jessica Lavariega-Monforti and Adam McGlynn, “Aquí Estamos? A Survey of Latino Portrayal in Introductory U.S. Government and Politics Textbooks,” PS: Political Science and Politics 43 (2010): 309–316. 9 Marcos Pizarro, Chicanas and Chicanos in School: Racial Profiling, Identity Battles, and Empowerment (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2005). 10 J. Peter Euben, Corrupting Youth: Political Education, Democratic Culture and Political Theory (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997), p. 186. 11 Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, trans. Myra Bergman Ramos (New York: Continuum, 2000), p. 134.

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to teaching engenders passivity inside and outside of the classroom and socializes students to follow orders and defer to experts. Students learn to doubt their own intelligence and look for someone who knows more than they do. The banking model of education entrenches the authority, hierarchy and knowledge nexus. As an alternative to the banking model of education, Freire puts forth a conception of education as a mode of liberation based on the idea of education as a “practice of freedom.” As Richard Shaull puts it in his Foreword to Freire’s text, “there is no such thing as a neutral educational process. Education either functions as an instrument that is used to facilitate the integration of the younger generation into the logic of the present system and bring about conformity to it, or it becomes ‘the practice of freedom.’”12 Freire sees education as a practice of freedom, an imperative of liberation for the oppressed. Education as a practice of freedom requires a dialogic approach to learning. One that encourages students to trust themselves, one that frees their creative power and one that helps students name their world. For Freire, an education in liberation equips people to “develop their power to perceive critically the way they exist in the world.”13 This is the approach I try to practice in the classroom and employ as a part of a broader political strategy to fight the grim prospects for success faced by the working class and people of color in the U.S. As I have already mentioned, I work with a predominantly Latin@ student population. For a variety of reasons, Latin@s face the highest dropout rates of any major ethnic group in the U.S.14 Nationally, incarceration rates for Latin@s are twice as high as compared to Whites.15 Low educational achievement and disproportionate incarceration are two sides of the same coin. In his book on how Chican@s have fared in educational institutions, Marcos Pizarro demonstrates that they have not performed well. As opposed to constructing a narrative that finds the sources of failure in Latin@ culture itself, Pizarro argues poor academic performance is the result of the indifference of teachers, underfunded schools, curriculum requirements irrelevant to the needs and interests of the students, lack of 12 Richard Shaull, “Foreword,” in Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, trans. Myra Bergman Ramos (New York: Continuum, 2000), p. 34. 13 Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, p. 83. 14 Marcos Pizarro, Chicanas and Chicanos in School: Racial Profiling, Identity Battles, and

Empowerment (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2005), p. 1. 15 Pew Research Center Report, April 7, 2009.

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contextual mentoring and, in some cases, racism.16 For Pizarro, Latin@ students must discuss the issues that are important to them. Course material must be relevant to their lives. Taking students on a field trip to a prison bridges the theoretical work of Freire on education as a practice of freedom with the practical recommendations of Pizarro. It allows students to interact with their faculty member outside of the stifling classroom setting. It also levels the playing field between faculty and students by putting both in a situation where they are relatively equal. Additionally, students are able to discuss the issues that are important to them pertaining to the field trip. This serves to validate the connections that students make.17

Pedagogy and Prison The prison as both metaphor and concrete reality occupies a central place among theorists, film directors, activists and is present in popular culture. In the Republic, Plato emphasized the prison-like character of ignorance (cf. “allegory of the cave”). For Plato, a prison break—freeing oneself from the chains of the cave of shadows—was the necessary condition for human enlightenment. Friedrich Nietzsche explores the question of punishment in On the Genealogy of Morals. Nietzsche concludes that it is ultimately unclear why anyone is punished since punishment does not make a human better and does not prevent future misdeeds. Michel Foucault came to a similar conclusion about the cruelty and pointlessness of punishment. Foucault also led a human rights campaign that sought to transform not only how we view inmates but conditions for prison inmates too.18 In the film “Battle of Algiers,” Ali la Pointe experiences a political awakening in a prison. As portrayed in the film, Ali La Pointe witnesses the execution of an un-named Algerian and achieves political consciousness through that event and via conversations pertaining to the French occupation of Algeria with other prisoners.

16 See Pizarro, Chicanas and Chicanos in School, 2005. 17 For an example of how to speak with people from radically different locations and with

experiences alien to one’s own, see Gregory Boyle, Tattoos on the Heart: The Power of Boundless Compassion (New York: Free Press, 2010). 18 See Michel Foucault, “Prison Talk,” in Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews & Other Writings, 1972–1977, ed. Colin Gordon, trans. Gordon et al. (New York: Pantheon, 1980).

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In addition to the theoretical and cinematic aspects pertaining to prisons, prison is ground zero for critically oriented intellectuals and political activists. Many thinkers, political activists and politicians spent time in prison including Socrates, Frederick Douglass, Henry David Thoreau, Martin Luther King Jr., Antonio Gramsci, Nelson Mandela, Angela Davis and countless others. There is also a lot of popular interest in gangs, prisons, prison life and the “criminal element.” Many of my students report watching and knowing about television programs such as “Cops,” “Locked Up,” “Locked-Up Abroad” and “Gangland.” Additionally, political candidates routinely exploit prison inmates to mobilize the electorate via fear for right-wing law and order policies (e.g. more prisons; security surveillance; walls; expanded police forces). Finally, prisons are horrible dystopian places but they also name possibility and hope. They are a way to hold a mirror up to our ideals, a place to reflect on who we are, how we treat people who make mistakes and a place to trigger a conversation about how to imagine a world where prisons would not exist.

Field Trip to a Prison As opposed to trying to drag my students out of Plato’s cave, I turn Plato on his head and take willing students on a field trip to an actual prison to explore questions pertaining to citizenship, the ethics and politics of punishment, the possibility of rehabilitation, justice, education, power and domination. In one of my theory courses, I scheduled a visit to a local prison on a Friday afternoon into the outline of possible course activities listed in the syllabus. My students were thrilled to have this opportunity. Research demonstrates that off-campus activities create a stimulating learning environment that can break down the inhibitions of students who may not feel comfortable in sterile classroom spaces.19 The prison visit also serves as an experience that allows students to share their observations about the prison with other students and connect this with course material when we are back in the classroom. Instructors reading this chapter that may want to take their students to a prison should keep a number of practical issues in mind. After I asked stu19 See John Halliday, “Political Liberalism and Citizenship Education: Towards Curriculum Reform,” British Journal of Educational Studies 47 (1999): 34–55; see also Raymond J. Wlodkowski, Enhancing Adult Motivation to Learn: A Comprehensive Guide for Teaching All Adults (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2008).

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dents who demonstrate interest in visiting the prison to write their name on a list, I sought approval with the Dean of Students for the off-campus activity. I also contacted the prison warden to obtain permission. The students and I reviewed university and prison regulations pertaining to off-campus trips and dress code requirements. For example, sexually provocative and torn or ripped clothing constituted grounds for ejection from the prison. The day had arrived. It was time to go to jail. Located in Edinburg, Texas, Reynoldo V. Lopez State Jail has a maximum capacity of 1100 inmates, 262 total employees, and inmates are serving relatively short-term sentences (five years) for a variety of offenses including burglary, DWI, robbery, aggravated assault and robbery, and drug possession/trafficking.20 According to their website, Lopez State Jail offers educational programs in literacy (GED), CHANGES/Pre-Release and Cognitive Intervention. Over 60% of inmates at Lopez Jail are Hispanic, approximately 20% are Black, and 14% are White. Students arrived at the prison at approximately 1:00 p.m. Once we were all there, a prison guard greeted us in the parking lot. We walked past an outdoor plaque that stated “Dedicated to Improving Lives,” and walked up a short staircase and entered the first door. We surrendered our identification and walked through a metal detector. Then, the prison warden greeted us in the glass booth area where inmates speak with visitors. After this welcome speech, students were escorted through a door and then to the entrance of the main prison housing unit area. We walked passed a sign that states “NO NEGOTIATION WITH HOSTAGES.” During the three-hour tour, students observed a demonstration of prison contra-band (e.g. tattoo machines; prison ink; weapons and “shanks”; and homemade alcohol made with bread and pieces of fruit). Students were impressed with the creativity and ingenuity of the inmates. We toured the inmate medical center, the “yard,” eating areas, educational facilities and housing units. We learned that the unarmed guards monitoring inmates wear goggles as protection against blood, feces, semen and urine, or a mixture of all of the above, thrown into their eyes by inmates. Finally, some students entered a vacant out-of-service prisoner cell. The conditions in the prison were startling and students commented on this. There is no air conditioning in the inmate housing units. The units have metal roofs (summers in South Texas are quite warm, with highs 20 See Texas Department of Criminal Justice website. This data pertains to the 2011 prison

visit.

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averaging over 100 F for months). Breakfast was at 3:00 a.m. The prison was overcrowded. The prison was noisy with thundering echoes. The environment was sterile, with concrete floors and thick metal doors. The scent of industrial strength chemical cleaning agents permeated the facility. After the tour was over, we gathered in the parking lot, but departed quickly, as it is against prison rules for visitors to linger in the parking lot. When a normal class session resumed the following week, students shared their experience with the class. Student interest in the prison visit was very high. It was much greater in comparison to anything else in the course. In terms of specific class activities, a wide range is possible. As Morgan C. Grefe suggests, students that visited the prison could write a letter to a family member from the vantage point of a prison inmate describing their life in prison. Students could also write a memo as a legislator advocating prison reform that focuses on the problems that participants observed. Students could evaluate the living conditions in jail from the perspective of a human rights activist. Finally, students could argue that serving time in jail is an effective approach to prevent crime and transform a criminal into a well-functioning member of society.21 In my course, not all students in the class were able to go on the field trip due to family, work and other obligations, or they elected not to visit the prison for other reasons, so these assignments would not be fair to students who did not want to or were unable to visit the prison. Nevertheless, students that participated were willing to discuss and describe their experience with the entire class. In fact, I had a hard time keeping the discussion focused given the level of interest and excitement pertaining to the prison field trip. In this respect, taking students to the prison on a field trip created a student-centered learning environment, where students discussed the issues that were important to them, which research shows improves academic success.22

21 See Morgan C. Grefe, “Making Prison History Matter: Field Trips and Lessons for

History and Civics,” Connecticut History 47 (2008): 132–136. 22 See Candace C. Archer and Melissa K. Miller, “Prioritizing Active Learning: An Exploration of Gateway Courses in Political Science,” PS: Political Science and Politics 44 (2011): 429–434. See also Miguel Cantellas, “Pop Culture in the Classroom: American Idol, Karl Marx, and Alexis de Tocqueville,” PS: Political Science and Politics 43 (2010): 561–573; Tyrone C. Howard, “Culturally Relevant Pedagogy: Ingredients for Critical Teacher Reflection,” Theory into Practice 42 (2003): 195–202; Gloria Ladson-Billings, “Toward a Theory of Culturally Relevant Pedagogy,” American Educational Research Journal 32 (1995): 465–491;

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Prison Field Trip Reading Assignments Before the prison visit, a class discussion took place to explore assumptions students had about conditions in prisons, inmates and punishment. Prior to sharing their ideas with the class, students wrote these preconceptions down and handed them in. Pre-prison visit perceptions were used after the prison visit to assess whether and how they differed from postprison field-trip perceptions. In terms of specific reading material, students read Nietzsche’s On the Genealogy of Morals and a chapter from Dana Villa’s Socratic Citizenship.23 These texts highlight the stark contrast between engaged citizenship and prisoner subjection. Faculty could also assign parts of Foucault’s Discipline and Punish to prepare for the visit. In terms of the reading material by Villa, we explore the idea of the prison as the space of political death, since felons lose the right to participate in politics (e.g. vote), although this varies from state to state and depends on the character of crime committed. Additionally, as Villa argues in his book, dissident citizenship is an important but forgotten component of democracy, one exemplified by the life and death of Socrates, but one marginalized in normal political life. This form of active citizenship is impossible in the context of the prison by living in relative isolation. Additionally, inmates did not have the luxury of engaging in Socratic dialogue. As we walked by them, for example, they were ordered (e.g. screamed at) to remain silent and press their faces up against a wall. Of those who attended, students were encouraged to use the reading material to analyze what they observed during the prison visit. Students also had the option of including their insights drawn from the prison visit in their required argumentative essays. Students reported enjoying the prison visit and said they would never forget it. In terms of the impact of the prison field trip on student performance, students who included references to the prison visit in their essays demonstrated greater mastery of course material. A student informed me that he was better able to understand the mentality of the colonized as depicted in Fanon’s Wretched of the Earth.

and Raymond J. Wlodkowski, Enhancing Adult Motivation to Learn: A Comprehensive Guide for Teaching All Adults (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2008). 23 See Dana Villa, Socratic Citizenship (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001).

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Refutation of Objections The advantages of a field trip to a prison outweigh the disadvantages. It is nonetheless important to specify possible challenges, disadvantages and problems. The prison is arguably terrifying and could be traumatizing for a student and a faculty member. For example, when student participants came into visual contact with approximately one hundred inmates behind a large glass window, many students looked visibly uncomfortable. It is also unpleasant to observe humans in cages. It is impossible to know how students will react to this. In terms of the unpredictability of experiential learning, consider the next example. A handful of inmates were jeering and pointing at the participants, especially the female ones. In response, a female student made an inappropriate sexual gesture back at the inmates (e.g. she pretended to lift up her blouse which would expose her breasts) but she stopped when she noticed I saw her do this. Finally, the prison warden ejected a student from the prison for a dress code violation. It is important to realize that the traditional classroom space is a safe and controlled environment for learning. Experiential learning in a prison adds an intense visceral dimension. Additionally, a maximum of thirty students can visit the prison on a particular day. If class size is more than thirty, all students will not be able to attend the trip and faculty members might be in the position of telling interested students that they are not able to participate. Finally, even being in a prison for a few hours is unpleasant. I am sure most people could think of a better way to spend a Friday afternoon. Based on my experience, the advantages of taking students to a prison that include leveling the playing field between faculty/instructor (e.g. subverting hierarchy), learning about prison conditions, and creating a student-centered learning environment outweigh the disadvantages. Visiting a prison on a field trip can create a vibrant learning environment and can break down some of the barriers that might exist between students and faculty. All students were able to fulfill learning objectives pertaining to the application of theory to practical situations (e.g. students explained what Nietzsche would say about the prison conditions we observed). Students demonstrated critical thinking skills (e.g. students compared and contrasted educational institutions with the prison). Students also engaged in critical textual analysis (e.g. students analyzed strengths and weaknesses of Nietzsche’s view on punishment).

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Conclusion Students need to learn and know that their voice and experiences are essential components in understanding their role as citizens in a democracy and as active participants in their education. Taking students to a prison provides a unique opportunity to stimulate student engagement and create a student-centered learning environment defined as giving students the opportunity to discuss the issues that are important to them. It also creates a learning environment where students can use a personal experience to connect theory with practice. It levels the playing field between student and professor since both are virtual inmates for a day. Finally, it can also encourage students to share their experiences in class with the police and other authority figures. Approximately one year after the prison visit, I contacted students who visited the prison. I posed the following questions: Could you please write a paragraph (or more if possible) describing what you learned from the prison visit, how it impacted your performance in the course, whether you thought it was a positive or negative experience and why, and anything else you feel comfortable sharing about your visit to the prison? One student over one year after the prison visit had the following to say: I believe the prison visit helped in a great way, it made me open my eyes to how a prison is really like. I watch many shows where delinquents go in for one day and they get to go inside and experience it firsthand like we did, and I thought they were just exaggerating but now I know that they weren’t. I believe it was a positive experience, even though I know for myself I will never be in jail anytime soon or ever, but it was an experience I will never forget because every time people talk about jail they say some horrific things and now I believe it because I got to experience those things when I went. The way they have no privacy, and a certain schedule in order for them to eat, and the way that like about six people had to share one cell, including the restroom. The stories that the guards would tell us were also very interesting and unbelievable because I never thought people were that messed up to do the things that they did. It was very interesting the way that they had to be standing against a wall and not make any eye contact whenever we passed by. I also like the fact that the people in prisons had many opportunities to shape up their lives even if they were in jail. I liked that they could take classes and do volunteer work. It was a scary experience at first because of the way some prison members treated us, like screamed at us and made these noises when they saw us but the experience overall was worth it. They should have programs that can take high school students or even middle school kids to

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jail so that more and more children will experience the negativity of going to jail so that they will get their lives together and shape up their lives before it is too late. (Student prison visit testimonial received via email, May 15, 2012)

Even though the student did not connect the prison experience with course material, the statement contains details pertaining to the trip (written over 15 months after the visit to Lopez Jail), as well as a recommendation about taking younger students to correctional facilities. This indicates that the prison visit was a memorable and significant experience for this student. Based on a field trip to a prison, my experience indicates that students are more willing to argue and participate in class when the material and class activities are controversial and relevant. Analyzing the relationship between democracy and punishment in a prison is a great way to begin a conversation with students about assumptions about inmates, prisons, democratic citizenship and mass incarceration. Because students and faculty share an experience, the prison field trip can increase the level of trust between them. The field trip can also be a form of education as social justice insofar as it subverts the authority, inequality and knowledge nexus intrinsic to traditional approaches to teaching and learning.24 Finally, the prison visit opens a space for students to discuss what is important to them, it disrupts traditional authority relations between students and faculty and it stimulates critical reflection on one of the fastest growing industries in the U.S. It is also my way to re-conceptualize learning as an intense and joyful undertaking that reinvents pedagogy as the practice of equality.

24 For education as a social justice practice, see Marcos Pizarro, Chicanas and Chicanos in School, 2005, p. 266.

CHAPTER 5

Frantz Fanon’s Subversive Pedagogy

Abstract Subversive pedagogy is an embodied experience of disruption that shatters the oppressed colonial subject, undermines the discourse of universality, fosters a bottom-up perspective and gives birth to new militant political identities. After I present these aspects of Fanon’s thinking, I draw some parallels between Fanon’s subversive pedagogy and National Football League (NFL) athlete-protestors. Subversive pedagogy emerges as a visceral experience of disruption that exposes the authority, hierarchy and knowledge nexus and the doctrine of color blindness as neocolonial practices.

Introduction The dialogue about racism in the U.S. seems to be stuck and going nowhere fast. Indeed, confusion, double talk and exhaustion inflect conversations about racial injustice today. Because of its subtle and constantly mutating forms and the cloud of denial that surrounds it, talking about racial injustice is perhaps more difficult than it has ever been. When it comes to racial injustice, most Americans enjoy a diet of complacent ignorance, selective amnesia and cold indifference.1 To complicate this matter even 1 See Ange-Marie Hancock, Solidarity Politics for Millennials: A Guide to Ending the Oppression Olympics (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), pp. 8–13.

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further, I occasionally hear racist jokes, derogatory comments and generalizations about people of color. The individuals making these claims assume that because I am white I will agree with them and they often throw in the statement “I am not a racist but…” and “you know what I mean.” If I question them about what they say, they become defensive and the conversation ends awkwardly. There are many other reasons why the dialogue about racial injustice seems to be stuck. First, the voices that are allowed to participate (and the ones excluded) in the public conversation about it have framed the issues in an individualistic and narrow manner so as to perpetuate a shallow, ahistorical and largely celebratory conversation about how much progress has been made for people of color. The power of the “American dream,” namely, the myth that hard work pays off and that any individual can succeed in America also blocks the discussion. Anyone who does not succeed cannot blame structures of power (e.g. racial bias, patriarchy, class position, (dis)ability, heteronormativity) but has only themselves to blame. Ignored is data on poverty and wealth, disproportionate incarceration, racial profiling, police brutality, discrimination and limited educational attainment for people of color.2 Second, the U.S. Supreme Court’s proclamations on race, current doctrine of “color blindness,” dismantling of affirmative action and the Court’s repeated claims that race is no longer relevant has also stifled the conversation about racial justice. It has led to the belief that white people are now the primary victims of racism and that reverse discrimination is rampant.3 In the sphere of electoral politics, politicians make subtle and coded racist statements out of one side of their mouth to mobilize the white electorate while they proudly proclaim that race is no longer relevant out of the other side. Unfortunately, this tactic pays off with electoral victory. This form of “dog whistle politics,” however, seems to have ended with the victory of

2 See Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness (New York: The New Press, 2012); Victor M. Rios, Punished: Policing the Lives of Black and Latino Boys (New York: New York University Press, 2011); and Angela Davis, Are Prisons Obsolete? (New York: Seven Stories Press, 2003). 3 See Ian Haney López, White by Law: The Legal Construction of Race (New York: New York University Press, 1996). For an analysis of affirmative action, see Ira Katznelson, When Affirmative Action Was White: The Untold History of Racial Inequality in Twentieth-Century America (New York: W. W. Norton, 2005).

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Donald Trump and racism has mutated yet again.4 Trump made repeated and explicitly racist and anti-immigrant claims as a way to generate white political support for his bid for the presidency. His bet that racism in a post-racial society can mobilize anxious white Americans into the voting booth paid off and he won the election, even though he lost the popular vote.5 The view that racial justice only pertains to African Americans and other people of color and therefore constitutes a narrow form of “identity politics” also stands in the way of intelligent and informed dialogue about racial justice. It would be better to talk about political issues that mattered to everyone (e.g. class). Racism is over and is simply “black America’s problem.”6 In some academic circles, talking about identity and race is frowned upon even among individuals who identify as politically progressive. Their position sounds something like this. The fixation on race eclipses the common, obscures social class and risks becoming a form of politically counter-productive essentialism and cultural/identity politics.7 Political candidates representing (or claiming to represent) working Americans (including people of color) are also unable to talk about racial issues in a productive manner. For example, even though African Americans supported her at a rate higher than Bernie Sanders, Hillary Clinton failed to responsibly respond to questions about racial injustice (e.g. “superpredators”) raised by a protestor at a $500 per plate fundraiser.8 In Seattle, black protestors shut down a Bernie Sanders rally. According to Seattle’s #BlackLivesMatter chapter, it protested the Sanders event for the following reason: “The problem with Sanders, and with white Seattle progressives 4 See Ian Haney López, Dog Whistle Politics: How Coded Racial Appeals Have Reinvented Racism and Wrecked the Middle Class (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014). 5 For the ways in which poor, working-class and middle-class whites and wealthy elites overcome class animosity and unite via racism, see Joel Olson, The Abolition of White Democracy (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2004). 6 See John McWhorter, “Racism in America Is Over,” Forbes, December 30, 2008. 7 See Richard Rorty, Achieving Our Country (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1998).

Rorty argues that the cultural left has eclipsed the reformist left. See also Sheldon Wolin, “Democracy, Difference, and Re-cognition,” in Fugitive Democracy and Other Essays, ed. Nicholas Xenos (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2016). See, finally, Wendy Brown, States of Injury: Power and Freedom in Late Modernity (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995). 8 See Eugene Scott, “Black Lives Matter Protester Confronts Clinton at a Fundraiser,” CNN, February 26, 2016.

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in general, is that they are utterly and totally useless (when not outright harmful) in terms of the fight for Black lives.”9 Finally, the appropriation of the legacy of Martin Luther King, Jr. has also hindered the conversation about racism. His legacy has become a status quo perpetuating message about the importance of calmly pursuing political change within the parameters of the political system. MLK’s name is on approximately 900 street signs throughout the U.S. and Puerto Rico.10 MLK day is a national holiday and he has become a part of black history month. This incorporation arguably reflects the domestication of his legacy and his transformation into a non-threatening activist. In what is without doubt a distortion of his legacy, Mike Huckabee stated King would criticize Black Lives Matter protestors because King believed that all lives matter.11 “Thank you for making me even more depressed than I already am,” one might say in response to this bleak situation. It would be a mistake to throw up our hands and simply tell people of color that there is no hope. My goal is not to plunge us into the abyss of despair but to trigger a shift in how we talk about racial injustice. I also want to show how educators can disrupt white privilege and deafness in the classroom via subversive pedagogy as a visceral experience of disruption that exposes and undermines tactics of mystification (e.g. doctrine of color blindness). This chapter connects to the other ones insofar as it contributes to a general theory of radical political theory pedagogy as the practice of equality and exposes the doctrine of color blindness as the latest phase of colonialism. I turn to the work of the revolutionary theorist Frantz Fanon as a way to change the terms of the debate on racism and white privilege, reflect on the best ways to bring about racial justice and explore how subversive

9 See Dan Merica, “Black Lives Matter Protesters Shut Down Sanders Event in Seattle,” CNN, August 10, 2015. See also Gil Troy, “Why Black Voters Don’t Feel the Bern,” Politico, March 7, 2016. 10 See Haimy Assefa, “Restoring MLK’s Dream, Street by Street,” CNN, January 18, 2016. 11 CNN, August 18, 2015. Mike Huckabee falsifies the content of King’s writings as well as the historical record. For King’s defense of extreme tactics, forcing a crisis and fostering tension, see “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” in Why We Can’t Wait (New York: Signet, 2000). King states: “Nonviolent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and foster such a tension that a community which has constantly refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue” (p. 67). See also Charles E. Cobb, Jr., This Nonviolent Stuff’ll Get You Killed: How Guns Made the Civil Rights Movement Possible (New York: Basic Books, 2014). For Cobb, “this willingness to use deadly force ensured the survival not only of countless brave men and women but also of the freedom struggle itself” (p. 1).

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forms of pedagogy are key components in this transformation. Why turn to Frantz Fanon, the apostle of revolutionary violence, to explore issues pertaining to racial justice and pedagogy? What possibly could this advocate of the violent overthrow of colonial regimes who died decades ago contribute to reflection on racism and pedagogy today? After all, colonialism is dead, the French have left Algeria, and national self-determination has won the day. Despite the possible objections against turning to Fanon, I argue that Fanon’s work is indispensable for reflection on the politics of racial oppression and pedagogy because he offers a message of hope via visceral pedagogy and confrontational forms of political activity.12 Fanon is also valuable for reflection on racial justice because he offers an immanent critique of abstract liberal theory, strips politics down to its polemical essence (e.g. conflict and violence) and thereby shatters the various forms of obfuscation (e.g. discourse of universality; color blindness) that serve as covers to racism.13 Through uncovering the historical and psychological bases of oppression that create docility, submission and inhibition, combined with exposing the futility of liberal universal approaches to overcoming racism, Fanon’s work culminates in the defense of confrontational means for challenging racial injustice.14 As we shall see, the intersection between politics and pedagogy emerges as a particularly important site in Fanon’s work. However, and this is what this chapter contributes to ongoing discussions about Fanon’s significance today, Fanon’s work on the politics of pedagogy (e.g. colonial/oppressive versus liberating) has not received the attention

12 For a theoretical account that focuses on thinkers only from the Western canon, see Dana Villa, Teachers of the People: Political Education in Rousseau, Hegel, Tocqueville, and Mill (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2017). 13 See also Étienne Balibar, “Racism as Universalism,” in Masses, Classes, Ideas: Studies on Politics and Philosophy Before and After Marx, trans. James Swenson (New York: Routledge, 1994). 14 Fanon calls for a “new start,” a “new way of thinking,” a “new man.” He claims that the European game is over and that “we must look elsewhere besides Europe” (pp. 235–239). Fanon also highlights confrontational tactics used to contest European domination. See Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth, trans. Richard Philcox (New York: Grove Press, 2004), hereafter WE.

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it deserves.15 I attempt to fill this gap and stimulate a dialogue about the role of pedagogy in his thinking.

Frantz Fanon The neglect of Fanon’s views on pedagogy is a curious oversite given the centrality of this theme in his work. In the opening pages of his classic The Wretched of the Earth, for example, Fanon states that education “instills in the exploited a mood of submission and inhibition” (WE 3–4).16 Additionally, he argues “everything rests on educating the masses” (WE 138). In Black Skins White Masks, he continues this theme: “To induce [Amener, which is also translated as ‘to educate’] man to be actional, by maintaining in his circularity the respect of the fundamental values that make the world human, that is the task of the utmost urgency for he who, after careful reflection, prepares to act” (BSWM 197).17 Frantz Fanon (1925–1961) was born in the Caribbean on the island of Martinique. The standard view is that he is a prophet of violence for the “wretched of the earth.”18 A number of experiences were important for 15 Jean-Paul Sartre gave the question of violence center stage in his Preface to WE. Hannah Arendt has a critical account of Fanon and violence in On Violence (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1970). The focus on violence has led to the neglect of other themes in Fanon’s work. For Sefa Dei and Simmons, there has been “inadequate attention paid to Fanon’s ideas and the pedagogical implications.” See George J. Sefa Dei and Marlon Simmons, “The Pedagogy of Fanon: An Introduction,” Counterpoints 368 (2010): xiii. See also Zeus Leonardo and Ronald K. Porter, “Pedagogy of Fear: Toward a Fanonian Theory of ‘Safety’ in Race Dialogue,” Race Ethnicity and Education 13:2 (2010): 139–157. 16 It is not only in Fanon’s Wretched of the Earth where the pedagogical significance of the

fight against colonialism appears. References to education and pedagogy can also be found in Fanon, Toward the African Revolution: Political Essays, trans. Chevalier (New York: Grove Press, 1988), hereafter TAR; Black Skin, White Masks, trans. Philcox (New York: Grove Press, 2008), hereafter BSWM; A Dying Colonialism, trans. Chevalier (New York: Grove Press, 1965), hereafter ADC; and Frantz Fanon: Alienation and Freedom, eds. Khalfa and Young, trans. Corcoran (New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2018), hereafter AF. 17 The French amener has a variety of meanings. Richard Philcox translates it as “induce.” Amener also implies to bring, to take, to cause, to bring up, to lead, to pull. All of these are closely connected with “to educate.” 18 For these and related themes, see Rethinking Fanon: The Continuing Dialogue, ed. Nigel C. Gibson (Amherst, New York: Humanity Books, 1999). See also The Fact of Blackness: Frantz Fanon and Visual Representation, ed. Alan Read (Seattle: Bay Press, 1996) and Fanon: A Critical Reader, eds. Lewis R. Gordon, T. Denean Sharpley-Whiting, and Renée T. White (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2000).

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his intellectual trajectory. He fought and he was wounded while serving for the Free French Army in Europe. After his recovery, he continued his education in Lyon, France. He pursued a wide range of interests at the university including literature, philosophy, medicine and psychiatry. While in France, he attended lectures by Maurice Merleau-Ponty. He was also strongly influenced by French existentialism. Ultimately, he passed the Médicat des hôpitaux psychiatriques and became a doctor. He practiced psychiatry in a manner that incorporated his interests in medicine, politics and philosophy. Shortly after assuming a post at a hospital in French Algeria, he joined the revolutionary FLN [Algerian National Liberation Front]. He also served as an ambassador to Ghana before his death in 1961. Fanon worked with Algerians suffering from a variety of mental and physical complexes caused by French domination in Algeria. Fanon articulated paths for recovery for his patients. He practiced a form of pedagogicalpolitical-psychiatry. He identified mental complexes caused by colonialism and prescribed revolution as the cure. Because his work contains an autobiographical aspect at nearly every turn, his presence as an author makes the reader feel as if Fanon is on the verge of jumping out from between the pages. This intensity is also the result of his inability to type. It also stems from Fanon’s visceral hatred of colonialism and racism. As Leo Zeilig puts it, Fanon tried to invoke in the reader “an experience of what race and racism really mean and how they are felt.”19 Fanon’s time in France was central to his political transformation and newfound political consciousness. In A Dying Colonialism, for example, he states that his time in France “confirmed for me what I already sensed: that I was not French, that I had never been French” (ADC 175). The problem, however, was that Fanon was told that he was French. Formally, he was a French citizen. Empirically, though, Fanon “had never been French.” Fanon left France for Algeria where he practiced psychiatry in Blida-Joinville from 1953 until 1957. He learned that the hospital where he worked was going to be raided. He resigned from this position and left Algeria. Diagnosed with Leukemia, he died in the U.S. at the age of thirtysix. Fanon was an intellectual generated by the contradiction between the discourse of liberal universalism and the way in which these ideals were hypocritically deployed for people of color.

19 See Leo Zeilig, Frantz Fanon: The Militant Philosopher of Third World Revolution (New York: I. B. Tauris, 2016), p. 39.

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Universalism as Ideology The Western world prides itself on its intellectual achievements and, as Fanon puts it, its “humanistic superiority” (TAR 125). Universalism and the doctrine of human rights are two of the West’s shining stars. Individuals are rational. They pursue their conception of the good and determine their place in the world. The doctrine of universalism dissolves particular differences (ethnic/racial; gender; class). It also elevates a transcendental disembodied subject as master of the universe and at least theoretically creates a world community based on equality, rationality and self-determination. Reason leads to knowledge. Knowledge leads to freedom. Progress is universal.20 The philosophical articulation of radical enlightenment and universalism found its political enunciation in the revolutions of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The work of the eighteenth century philosopher Immanuel Kant exemplifies the doctrine of liberal universalism, one that is not without its own internal ambiguities. Indeed, Kantian universalism depends on a strange oscillation between the formal side of Kant’s thinking apparent in his ethical tracts like Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals and the limitations of the abstract or universal form when it runs up against its political and empirical deployment.21 As Étienne Balibar has noted in his essay “Racism as Universalism,” Kantian universalism is grounded in certain anthropological characteristics “in which the characters of sex, people, and race are thought of as natural categories.”22 The fact that these categories are posited as natural impacts Kant’s politico-philosophical trajectory. It leads Kant, for example, to identify greater and lesser degrees of “civilization” in nations and races. This aspect of his thinking links Kant to colonialism, empire and the domination of “savages.” For Kant, the two most civilized nations on earth are, for example, “England and France.”23 The intermixture of races, Kant claims, “does not seem beneficial to the human race.” For Kant, “humanity is at 20 For a critique of these and related ideas, see Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno, Dialectic of Enlightenment, trans. Edmund Jephcott (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2002). 21 Fanon states: “The starry sky that left Kant in awe has long revealed its secrets to us” (BSWM 202). See also Robert Young, White Mythologies: Writing History and the West (New York: Routledge, 1990). 22 See Étienne Balibar, “Racism as Universalism,” p. 196. 23 See Immanuel Kant, Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View, trans. Victor Lyle

Dowdell (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1978), p. 226. See also Kant, Obser-

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its greatest perfection in the race of the whites.”24 Such statements cast a shadow on the universal and egalitarian character of human reason Kant celebrates in “An Answer to the Question: ‘What is Enlightenment?’”25 Kant’s abstract universalism announces and seems to take away the unconditional egalitarianism and cosmopolitanism his universalism at least initially seems to promise.26 A similar giving and then taking away is also apparent in one of the most important political documents of the eighteenth century. “The Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen,” approved on August 26, 1789 by the National Assembly of France, announces universal ideals for the political sphere that are intended to undermine arbitrary authority, promote self-determination, fight corruption and protect the rights of the individual: The representatives of the French people, organized as a National Assembly, believing that the ignorance, neglect, or contempt of the rights of man are the sole cause of public calamities and of the corruption of governments, have vations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and Sublime, trans. John T. Goldthwait (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1960), pp. 110–111. 24 Immanuel Kant, Anthropology, p. 236. In reference to the “Carib,” Kant states he lives carelessly and “sells his sleeping-mat in the morning and in the evening is perplexed because he does not know where he will sleep during the night” (p. 78). See also Race and the Enlightenment: A Reader, ed. Emmanuel Chukwudi Eze (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2001), p. 63. See also Jonathan I. Israel, Democratic Enlightenment: Philosophy, Revolution, and Human Rights, 1750–1790 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), pp. 738–740. As Israel notes, other major European thinkers had troubling assumptions pertaining to race. Hegel claimed Africa has no history and it is not part of the historical part of the world. Germans were on the top of the racial pyramid. See also Teshale Tibedu, Hegel and the Third World: The Making of Eurocentrism in World History (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2011). Hegel depicts Africans as “people of the senses” (xii). Tibedu continues: “Hegel articulated a sophisticated theory of the rationality of European colonial expansion” (xiii). For Robert Young, “Marxism’s universalizing narrative of the unfolding of a rational system of world history is simply a negative form of the history of European imperialism” in White Mythologies: Writing History and the West (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1990), p. 2. 25 Immanuel Kant, “An Answer to the Question: ‘What Is Enlightenment?’” Kant: Political Writings, ed. Hans Reiss, trans. H. B. Nisbet (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991). 26 In contrast to Kant, Rawlsian universalism neutralizes racial/ethnic, gender and class differences behind the veil of ignorance in the original position. In this idealized space, the human is a human as such and is uncontaminated by markers of difference (e.g. ethnic/racial; gender; class; sexuality; ability). See John Rawls, A Theory of Justice (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1971) and Political Liberalism (New York: Columbia University Press, 2005).

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determined to set forth in a solemn declaration the natural, unalienable, and sacred rights of man, in order that this declaration, being constantly before all the members of the Social body, shall remind them continually of their rights and duties; in order that the acts of the legislative power, as well as those of the executive power, may be compared at any moment with the objects and purposes of all political institutions and may thus be more respected, and, lastly, in order that the grievances of the citizens, based hereafter upon simple and incontestable principles, shall tend to the maintenance of the constitution and redound to the happiness of all. (“The Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen,” 1789)

Article 1 in the same document goes further: “Men are born and remain free and equal in rights.” The implications for the political realm are clear. The political state creates the conditions (e.g. abstract human rights and political equality) for the “happiness of all.” These abstract ideals undermine illegitimate usurpations of power and provide the philosophical grounding for democracy. They also served as the meta-political basis for the transformation of subjects into citizens. The French “Declaration” created shock waves throughout the world because it threatened established power relations (e.g. inheritance; caste; slavery; preferential taxation for the poor). Sensing the threat, the conservative philosopher Edmund Burke was horrified and defended the ancien régime in Reflections on the Revolution in France. Others, however, employed the ideas announced in the French “Declaration” to fight for the cause of the oppressed. The “Declaration,” for example, inspired the overlooked Haitian anti-slavery and anti-colonial revolution (1791–1804). Ironically, the universal ideas of the French Revolution were a battle ground over who was included in the universal, where the universal applied and how far the universal could be extended. Many Haitians, for example, believed that the universal ideals articulated by the leaders of the French philosophical and political Enlightenment applied to them. The logic seemed simple enough. Since they are not bound to a particular time and place, universal ideals apply to everyone. This upset plantation power relationships on the wealthy sugar producing island of San Domingue and threatened the privileges of the colonial elite. As a result, a long and bloody revolution ensued between the Haitian revolutionaries and various reac-

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tionary colonial powers that sought to keep the slaves in their place via the denial of their inclusion under the Declaration’s emancipatory umbrella.27 These universal ideals as a political terrain of struggle (e.g. the antinomy between philosophical universalism and political practice) was experienced first-hand by countless other individuals living in European colonies and “departments.” Western universalism promised liberation for some; but for others it was pure verbiage. Nearly two centuries after “The Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen,” its flowery rhetoric did not square with Frantz Fanon’s lived experience in Martinique, France and Algeria. For Fanon, these ideals announced and negated the promised equality, freedom and self-determination. Fanon’s theoretical work provided a political form of deconstruction of the constitutive interrelationship between Western philosophy, which he argued provided the foil and justification for colonialism, on the one hand, and power and domination in the colonies, on the other. Western metaphysics, it turns out, was a political project based on a peculiar form of universalism. As the French Algerian philosopher Jacques Derrida puts it, “metaphysics – the white mythology which reassembles and reflects the culture of the West: the white man takes his own mythology, Indo-European mythology, his own logos, that is, the mythos of his idiom, for the universal form of that he must still wish to call Reason.”28 The roots of metaphysical-political domination were cloaked by the ideology of Western universalism. Ironically, the French Third Republic, the “golden age of French universalism,” was the high point of French colonialism.29 A combination of an arrogant civilizing impulse, domestic political crises and economic interests contributed to the French presence in Algeria for over a century (1830–1962). The problem of Algeria in terms of hypocrisy and selective deployment of the discourse of universality put into motion a variety of radical critiques of the Western tradition by twentieth 27 See C. L. R. James, The Black Jacobins: Toussaint L’Ouverture and the San Domingo Revolution (New York: Vintage, 1989). 28 See Jacques Derrida, “White Mythology: Metaphor in the Text of Philosophy,” Margins of Philosophy, trans. Alan Bass (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982), p. 213. See also Jacques Derrida, “Violence and Metaphysics: An Essay on the Thought of Emmanuel Levinas,” in Writing and Difference, trans. Alan Bass (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978). Deconstruction targeted Western metaphysics as a practice of power, subverted it from within and attempted to open the project of critical reflection to a new emancipatory project. 29 See Naomi Schor, “The Crisis of French Universalism,” Yale French Studies 100 (2001): 47. The French occupation of Algeria began in 1830 and ended in 1962.

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century French thinkers who had strong ties to Algeria or who grew up in Algeria. These authors include Albert Camus (born in Algeria), Jacques Derrida (born in Algeria), Hélène Cixous (born in Algeria), Louis Althusser (born in Algeria) as well as Jean-Paul Sartre, Maurice Blanchot, Pierre Bourdieu, Simon de Beauvoir, Michel Foucault, Jean-François Lyotard and many others.30 For Hélène Cixous, “I learned to read, to write, to scream, and to vomit in Algeria. To have seen ‘Frenchmen’ at the ‘height’ of imperialist blindness, behaving in a country that was inhabited by humans as if it were peopled by nonbeings, born-slaves. I learned everything from this first spectacle: I saw how the white (French), superior, plutocratic, civilized world founded its power on the repression of populations who had suddenly become ‘invisible.’”31 The culminating moment for French intellectuals pertaining to Algeria was the Manifesto of the 121 (“Declaration on the Right to Insubordination in the War in Algeria”).32 Colonialism and the system of racism that operated alongside and justified it enriched European powers through the extraction of natural resources, provided a never ending source of cheap labor, created a convenient location to send criminals and political trouble makers and tantalized travelers with cheap tourist destinations.33 Hence, Algeria served key political, economic and cultural functions. Support for the French presence in Algeria therefore ran deep. Yet again, the enlightenment and/or universal ideals that cloaked colonial domination only served as a sort of marketing and global public relations campaign that concealed what was actually taking place. Critically oriented French intellectuals protested against the hypocrisy: “The cause of the Algerian people, which contributes decisively

30 See Jean-François Lyotard, Political Writings, trans. Bill Readings and Kevin Paul Geiman (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993), pp. 165–326. See also Hélène Cixous and Catherine Clément, The Newly Born Woman, trans. Betsy Wing (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1988). See, finally, Pierre Bourdieu, The Algerians, trans. Alan C. M. Ross (Boston: Beacon Press, 1962). 31 Cixous and Clement, Newly Born Woman, 1988, p. 70. 32 See the Manifesto of the 121 or “Declaration on the Right to Insubordination in the War

in Algeria,” originally written in 1960, https://www.marxists.org/history/france/algerianwar/1960/manifesto-121.htm, accessed on December 27, 2017. See also Étienne Balibar, Citizen Subject: Foundations for Philosophical Anthropology, trans. Steven Miller (New York: Fordham University Press, 2017). See, in particular, Balibar’s “Blanchot’s Insubordination: On the Writing of the Manifesto of the 121,” pp. 256–272. 33 See Aimé Cesaire, Discourse on Colonialism, trans. Joan Pinkham (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2001).

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to the ruin of the colonial system, is the cause of all free men and women” (Manifesto of the 121). In this statement, the universal, “all free men and women,” was reversed to serve the Algerians in resistance, not sovereign French power.

Enter Fanon Although Fanon arrived late on the colonial scene, the world he observed in Algeria was in the hands of the European bourgeoisie. He observed that colonialism as practiced in Algeria was based on violent domination, theft, unequal power relations, lies, hypocrisy and exploitation. The expression “French Algeria” was a cruel and violent oxymoron, where the universal ground down the particular. As Fanon put it in reference to the French presence in Algeria, “colonialism cannot be understood without the possibility of torturing, of violating, or of massacring” (TAR 66).34 The exclusions built into “The Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen,” namely, its silence on the status of women and slaves, as well as the selective, contingent and conditional implementation of its core ideas, set the doctrine of universalism on a collision course with excluded others.35 The discourse of human rights, self-determination and democratic ideals represented the high point of France’s contribution to political humanism. French colonialism as a system of brutality and domination was the low point. The blatant contradiction between ideal and reality required lies to sustain it in practice, made life a living hell for the colonized and created, in Fanon’s words, a “sector on its knees, a sector of niggers, a sector of towelheads” (WE 5). The grandeur of France’s universal ideals only applied to white Europeans. Algerians were cast as sub-human, “thingified,” “objectified,” called “Mohammed” (TAR 14; 35): “Every contact between the occupied and the occupier is a falsehood” (ADC 65). As Charles W. Mills aptly puts it, “European humanism usually meant that only Europeans were human.”36 Fanon concurs:

34 Psychological warfare, pacification of the civilian population via arbitrary arrests, rape and torture were common practices in Algeria. 35 See C. L. R. James, The Black Jacobins: Toussaint L’Ouverture and the San Domingo Revolution (New York: Vintage, 1989). See also Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Women (New York: Penguin, 2004). 36 Charles W. Mills, The Racial Contract (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1997), p. 27.

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When it is strong, when it organizes the world on the basis of its power, a bourgeoisie does not hesitate to maintain a pretense of universal democratic ideas. An economically sound bourgeoisie has to be faced with exceptional circumstances to force it to disregard its humanist ideology. Although fundamentally racist, the Western bourgeoisie generally manages to mask this racism by multiplying the nuances, thereby enabling it to maintain intact its discourse on human dignity in all its magnanimity. (WE 109, emphasis added)

The pretense of universal ideas masked the racism of the Western bourgeoisie. The discourse of human dignity was, as Fanon puts it, “fundamentally racist” (WE 109). Even the medical establishment in Algeria was essentially political because it was part of an occupying force, accepted the fact that Algerians were not human and medical personnel practiced forms of “veterinarian medicine” on the Algerian people (ADC 127).37 The “multiplication of nuances,” qualifications and conditional applications of universal ideals only served to pump air into Europe’s humanist ideology and hide the domination and exploitation of Algerians.

Violence Colonialism is a system of oppression ultimately grounded in violence and the dehumanization of colonial inhabitants. According to Fanon, decolonization will therefore be a violent process (WE 1). Fanon knew that the problem of political violence was a complicated issue. For Fanon, “the issue of violence needs to be given careful consideration” (WE 33). The options to bring about political change were limited. Nothing would change via electoral politics. Negotiating with an occupying force was impossible. Fanon therefore came to a simple conclusion: “To wage war and to engage in politics are one and the same thing” (W 83). In this formulation of war as politics and politics as war, there were no bystanders and spectators: “A bystander is a coward or a traitor” (WE 140).38 With Fanon, recourse to violence was how the victims of European universalism

37 For the connection between the medical establishment and racism, see also Harriet Washington, Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present (New York: Broadway Books, 2006). 38 See also Étienne Balibar, “Politics as War, War as Politics: Post Clausewitzian Variations,” public lecture, Northwestern University, May 8, 2006.

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formulated a new universal and recovered their dignity and confidence.39 For him, violence unifies the people; it is a “cleansing force”; it “rids the colonized of their inferiority complex”; it “restores their self-confidence”; it gives birth to a new man (WE 51; 2). Violence, moreover, is the only language the colonizer understands (WE 42). Since colonialism is naked violence, it will only give in “when confronted with greater violence” (WE 23). For Fanon, liberation is possible “in and through violence” (WE 44). This represents politics, not as a tactic of mystification and weapon of domination against the people, but politics conceived of as praxis, struggle and the violent overthrow of the occupying force. For Fanon, the fight against colonialism was not “a rational confrontation of viewpoints” (WE 5). Irrespective of what it calls itself, colonial domination makes dialogue and negotiation impossible. Rigged elections prevent change and perpetuate colonialism. Local politicians betray their people in the name of their own self-interest. Academics nod their heads and proclaim the superiority of European ideals as their own people are massacred. The common people have their faces pinned to the ground and are told to speak and express their views but nothing comes out, just like dogs who are commanded to run while in a cage and are then whipped because they remained in their place. Fanon makes these and other themes clear in an important passage in The Wretched of the Earth. Here, Fanon argues that the values of the oppressor are tactics of mystification that cloak the violence and domination of colonialism with liberal abstract ideals. These ideals are shattered once they are brought into contact with the lived experience of people in political struggle: In its narcissistic monologue the colonialist bourgeoisie, by way of its academics, had implanted in the minds of the colonized that the essential values – meaning Western values – remain eternal despite all errors attributable to man. The colonized intellectual accepted the cogency of these ideas and there in the back of his mind stood a sentinel on duty guarding the Greco-Roman pedestal. But during the struggle for liberation, when the colonized intellectual touches base again with this people, this artificial sentinel is smashed to smithereens. All the Mediterranean values, the triumph of the individual, of enlightenment and Beauty turn into pale, lifeless trinkets. All those discourses 39 The new universal was based on the reciprocal relativism between cultures. See Fanon, TAR: “Universality resides in this decision to recognize and accept the reciprocal relativism of different cultures” (p. 44). Universalism thus becomes a political practice requiring interminable political struggle.

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appear a jumble of dead words. Those values which seemed to ennoble the soul prove worthless because they have nothing in common with the real-life struggle in which the people are engaged. (WE 11)

Fanon argues that abstract Western ideas do not apply to and, more importantly, negate the lived political experience of colonized people. The doctrine of equality has been used “to justify the extermination of man” (BSWM 12). In political struggle, abstract liberal universal ideals are shattered and revealed as “lifeless trinkets” and “dead words.” Western values are “smashed to smithereens.” In political struggle, words take on new meanings. Politics emerges as the battle over the meanings of words.40 The word truth loses its ahistorical character. It now signifies “what destroys the colonial regime” (WE 14). Likewise, good does not denote an abstract theory of justice but it is what “hurts the colonizer the most” (WE 14). Work does not mean a nine to five job but “to work toward the death of the colonist” (WE 44). Fanon’s words on violence, however, do not exhaust his understanding of political engagement. Another terrain was available for political struggle.

Pedagogy as Ideology Fanon argued that pedagogy was one of the key sites for revolutionary struggle. In Fanon’s words, “everything rests on educating the masses” (WE 138). The question becomes who educates the masses and how the masses are educated. Fanon thus gives us a vantage point to reflect on pedagogy as ideology, that is, a practice that attempts to perpetuate the subjugation of dominated populations.41 Pedagogical practices are not neutral but instruments of domination. They can perpetuate inequality and serve as legitimation tools for the political and economic status quo.42 The authority, hierarchy and knowledge nexus intrinsic to traditional pedagogy

40 The radio became a pedagogical instrument for the political awakening of the Algerian people via the spoken word. See Fanon, ADC, pp. 69–97. 41 See Craig Steven Wilder, Ebony and Ivy: Race, Slavery, and the Troubled History of America’s Universities (New York: Bloomsbury, 2013). 42 See Pierre Bourdieu and Jean-Claude Passeron, Reproduction in Education, Society and Culture, 2000. See also Wilder, Ebony and Ivy, 2013.

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perpetuates colonialism.43 Colonial pedagogy was a top-down epistemology of domination. Colonization is a form of top-down pedagogy that seeks to “make people ashamed of their existence” (BSWM 59) and creates what Fanon calls a “colonized personality” (WE 182), a “personality in shreds” (ADC 138). Subjugated populations learn via the pedagogy of domination how the world works meaning who is in charge, who matters, who speaks, who remains silent, who must stay in their place, what is valued and who is worthless. Official versions of knowledge are disseminated. The historical record is falsified and how one perceives the world is fundamentally altered. “Reality” emerges as a political construct based on a pedagogy of falsification.44 The mind and body are colonized. Colonization distorts vision and perception and instills an inferiority complex into the native population via brute force and daily humiliation. This takes place through a protracted learning process that teaches the colonized to see themselves through the eyes of the European. The colonized are also “made to feel inferior” via “cultural obliteration” (WE 16; 170).45 Nothing about the colonized is valued and their attempt to assimilate always fails. According to Fanon, “the oppressor, through the inclusive and frightening character of his authority, manages to impose on the native new ways of seeing” (TAR 38). The abstract universal values of the colonizer serve to mask the ways in which these values serve particular groups at the expense of everyone else. The correlate of the European’s feeling of superiority is l’infériorisation of the native (BSWM 73). As Albert Memmi put it, “the colonial situation manufactures colonialists, just as it manufactures the colonized.”46 Colonial education was a complicated process of surveillance. When 43 See Decolonising the University, eds. Gurminder K. Bhambra, Dalia Gebrial, and Kerem Ni¸sancio˘glu (London, UK: Pluto Press, 2018). 44 In racialized societies, the dominant group sees its social mobility and success as a reflection of merit and hard work as opposed to preferential treatment. In contrast, the failures of dominated groups are the product of their indolence. For these and related themes, see Ira Katznelson, When Affirmative Action Was White: An Untold History of Racial Inequality in Twentieth-Century America (New York: W. W. Norton, 2005). As Audre Lorde puts it, “racial difference creates a constant, if unspoken, distortion of vision.” See Audre Lorde, The Cancer Journals (San Francisco: Aunt Lute Books, 1980), p. 21. 45 For an analysis of the concept of “whitening” (e.g. an aesthetic project where people try to look white), see Ian Haney López, White by Law: The Legal Construction of Race (New York: New York University Press, 1996). 46 See Albert Memmi, The Colonizer and the Colonized (Boston: Beacon Press, 1991), p. 56.

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students spoke, their words were tightly monitored and controlled. When he speaks, Fanon claims, “I must watch my diction” (BSWM 4). In colonial but also capitalist societies, education, what Fanon calls the “teaching of moral reflexes,” serves to “instill in the exploited a mood of submission and inhibition which considerably eases the task of the agents of law and order” (WE 3–4). For Fanon, “the first thing the colonial subject learns is to remain in his place and not overstep its limits” (WE 15). In Fanon’s words, “everything rests on educating the masses, elevating their minds” (WE 138). Just like liberal abstract ideals, the authority, hierarchy and knowledge nexus mystifies its role as a form of social control. It announces itself as neutral and fair. This is a ruse. It names pedagogical domination.

Subversive Pedagogy Pedagogical practices and content can serve the political status quo. They can also transform it. Fanon deconstructs and then tries to reconstruct the colonized subject via a liberating form of pedagogy. A different pedagogical trajectory was possible beyond the authority, hierarchy and knowledge nexus. An alternative was needed that promoted equality, freedom and selfdetermination. Fanon struggled to articulate exactly what this would be. Fanon’s politico-pedagogical awakening and turn to subversive pedagogy was the result of his own protracted learning process. In chapter five of Black Skins, White Masks titled “The Lived Experience of the Black Man,” Fanon reflects on his own struggles as someone fixed and deemed inferior by the stares and glances of the police, teachers, fellow students and the entire world. He was, as he puts it, “overdetermined from the outside” (BSWM 95). He continues: “I was hated, detested, and despised, not by my next-door neighbor or a close cousin, but by an entire race” (BSWM 98). He could not assimilate enough; nor could he whiten himself out of being black and into “authentic” French existence: “Wherever he goes, a black man remains a black man” (BSWM 150). Fanon had been taught to hate the black man but, as Fanon states, “I am the black man” (BSWM 174). In theory, Fanon was French. He was reminded via daily humiliations that generated his self-alienation that this was not the case. While in a train, for example, he “existed in triple.” As he puts it, “I was responsible not only for my body but also for my race and my ancestors” (BSWM 92). Wherever he went “the white gaze, the only valid one, is already dissecting me, I am fixed” (BSWM 95). At a crucial moment that represents a turning point

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in the development of his political consciousness, he is identified in Lyon. While he was walking, a boy says to his mother, while referring to Fanon, “Look, a Negro!” [“Tiens, un nègre”]. The boy repeats it: “Maman, a Negro!” And then the boy says: “Maman, the Negro’s going to eat me” (BSWM 93). In an effort to defuse the awkward situation, the anxious mother responded to her child in a manner that was loud enough for Fanon to hear: “Look how handsome that Negro is.” Fanon responds to the boy’s mother: “The handsome Negro says, ‘Fuck you,’ Madame” (BSWM 94).47 This was the first step to Fanon’s political awakening. As he puts it, “I had identified the enemy and created a scandal” (BSWM 94, emphasis added). Fanon was a human being, not a Negro. To force the issue, Fanon repeats what the French women stated and refers to himself in the third person, as “the handsome Negro.” This draws attention to his alienation and distance from himself as a human who is simultaneously French and not French, trapped as “Negro” and all the negative associations this involves (e.g. lazy; dirty; stupid; animalistic; genitally determined). From this moment on, Fanon refused to play the mendacious game of liberal universalism where he is said to exist in the abstract as a person “just like everyone else” (albeit as one who is essentially and ontologically black) but is denied existence and recognition as a concrete human being.48 According to the discourse of liberal universality, Fanon was just like everyone else who was French. His abstract and legal identity, however, was out of alignment with his lived experience. As James R. Martel puts it, “a narrative of race and colonialism has been superimposed on and over Fanon’s own sense of self.”49 Fanon came to the realization that he could not continue to live if he believed what the dominant ideology told him about himself. He was not equal. He was not French. He was a BLACK MAN. As Fanon puts it, “since the Other was reluctant to recognize me, there was only one answer: to make myself known” (BSWM 95, emphasis added). Making himself known was an act of militant refusal. He refused to be misrecognized by the discourse of liberal universalism. From now on, 47 The French expression is “il t’emmerde, madame.” 48 The visceral and anger inducing character of this pedagogical moment for Fanon distin-

guishes it from Socratic pedagogy. Socrates promoted self-examination. His goal was to get others to rethink their priorities. Fanon, in contrast, was motivated by ending oppression and caring for the wretched of the earth. 49 See James R. Martel, The Misinterpellated Subject (Durham: Duke University Press, 2017), p. 98.

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Fanon was going to assert his own identity: “Accommodate me as I am; I’m not accommodating anyone” (BSWM 110). The subversive pedagogical significance of Fanon’s assertion of agency, as we shall see in the following example, is threatening to established power relations. Even though Fanon never wanted to travel to the U.S., I bring Fanon into dialogue with a form of protest taking place in the U.S. This highlights Fanon’s work on subversive pedagogy and illuminates Fanon’s relevance to what we do as educators committed to racial justice. Subversive pedagogy emerges as a visceral experience of disruption that undermines tactics of mystification (e.g. doctrine of color blindness) and exposes the authority, hierarchy and knowledge nexus as the latest phase of colonialism.

NFL Protest as Subversive Pedagogy If one takes the cold indifference that has met the #BlackLivesMatter movement as a sign, Fanon was right, black political agency is unwelcome, especially in white racial dictatorships. San Francisco 49er quarterback Colin Kaepernick found this out the hard way during the 2016–2017 football season. He refused to stand during a patriotic ritual. He challenged the pedagogical goal of the NFL in terms of the cultivation of an uncritical mode of patriotism via stealth bombers overhead and the national anthem. Kaepernick was “not going to stand up to show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses black people and people of color.”50 Kaepernick, now out of work, an athlete who led the 49rs to the Super Bowl in 2012, has filed a formal grievance against the NFL for collusion against hiring him.51 Kaepernick continues to draw media attention and he earned the Muhammad Ali Legacy Award from Sports Illustrated magazine.52 He stole the show and turned NFL games into sites of protest against police brutality. He practiced an inside/outside position insofar as he co-opted the NFL game platform to advance his anti-racist political agenda. He thereby revealed the NFL as a white space in a “color-blind” society, one that denies this fact even as the NFL excludes and tries to silence the voices of black athletes. Black 50 See CNN September 23, 2017. 51 Even though the NFL recently settled with Kaepernick and paid him an undisclosed

amount, Kaepernick’s defiance connects to Fanon’s work on the pedagogical import of radical black agency. 52 Des Beiler, Washington Post, November 30, 2017. See also Daniel Kreps, “Watch Jay-Z Salute Colin Kaepernick, Perform ‘4:44’ Tracks on ‘SNL,’” Rolling Stone, October 1, 2017.

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athletes comprise the majority of athletes playing in the NFL. About 70% of NFL players are black. About 75% of NFL head coaches are white.53 Other NFL players have also protested during the U.S. national anthem and other patriotic rituals by taking a knee and raising a fist at the beginning of the sporting event thus challenging the hegemonic form of patriotism peddled by the NFL. Some cheerleaders have begun to do the same.54 These protest gestures enrage Donald Trump and his loyal followers who see it as disrespectful to veterans and to the U.S. flag. Recently Trump stated: “Get that son of a bitch off the field right now, he’s fired. He’s fired!”55 Trump also stated that the protestors are “ruining the game.”56 Contra Trump, I read the actions of these athlete-protestors as a valuable form of political agency and subversive pedagogy insofar as they are naming the world in which they live, forcing recognition of their identity, opening the possibility of solidarity and engaging in a type of Fanonian defiance.57 They are pointing out the emptiness of abstract liberal ideals and contesting the NFL’s complicity with the spectacle of black massacre. In theory, U.S. citizens are equal before the law and have basic rights. The narrative the U.S. tells itself is one of a color-blind society where ethnic and/or racial designations are irrelevant. An individual’s character and merit determine success. Anyone can succeed in this land of unlimited opportunity, so the story goes. Thanks to dash cams and other recording devices that have documented encounters between people of color and the police, the lived experience of people of color in the U.S. tells a different

53 See https://qz.com/1287915/the-nfls-racial-makeup-explains-much-of-its-nationalanthem-problems/, accessed on May 4, 2019. 54 For an analysis of different forms of political agency taken by black athletes, see Joshua Wright, “Be Like Mike? The Black Athlete’s Dilemma,” Spectrum: A Journal of Black Men 4 (Spring 2016): 1–19. See also Eric Adelson, “Power of Kneeling Kennesaw State Cheerleaders Revealed in President’s Resignation,” Yahoo Sports, December 17, 2017. 55 See CNN, September 27, 2017. 56 See CNN, September 27, 2017. 57 For an analysis of the racial politics pertaining to the sports-entertainment complex, see

William C. Rhoden, Forty Million Dollar Slaves: The Rise, Fall and Redemption of the Black Athlete (New York: Three Rivers Press, 2006). For Rhoden, “the power relationship that had been established on the plantation has not changed, even if the circumstances around it have” (x).

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story, that is, one of police harassment/brutality/murder.58 This is what the NFL protestors are trying to highlight. Just like Fanon, who learned that liberal universalism was an ideology that engendered colonial oppression and preserved an oppressive racial order while mouthing equality and fairness for all, NFL athletes who protest see a racial order in the U.S. cloaked with the discourse of liberal universality. In response, protestor athletes are refusing to bow down to the false god of liberal universality symbolized in U.S. patriotism. They are asserting a counter-identity that draws attention to them not as abstract men but as African Americans living in a racialized polity. To put it differently, they are asserting a counteruniversal. The NFL athlete-protestors are thus critical patriots engaged in a form of political-pedagogy. They are disrupting top-down epistemologies of knowledge. The black athlete could forego this project and pretend to be white. As Fanon puts it, though, “no matter how white one paints the base of the tree the strength of the bark screams underneath” (BSWM 175). By silently protesting, these athletes are sending out a message of solidarity to other African Americans. The owner of the Dallas Cowboys, Jerry Jones, recently locked arms with his players in a show of solidarity but he has more recently claimed that players will not play if they disrespect the flag.59 Apparently, Jones has had enough of the gesture of protest that continues to draw media attention. Although everyone in principle defends free speech as an abstract right guaranteed by the Bill of Rights in the U.S. Constitution, it is easy to defend free speech as an abstract right. Acts of free speech that disrupt and exceed the spaces where this speech is authorized to occur and that voice dissent against America’s blind and thoughtless celebration of itself are not welcomed. Indeed, according to a recent poll, Americans oppose the NFL athlete acts of protest.60 Although it is hard to say with certainty why this is the case, this opposition to the athlete-protestors is arguably the result of the view that the status quo is just. Hence, nothing needs to change. Protest is unnecessary and absurd. Those who oppose the NFL athlete-protestors are unable to comprehend what they are doing and why they are doing it because they have 58 Police killed 1147 people in 2017. Black people were 25% of those killed despite being only 13% of the population. See https://mappingpoliceviolence.org/, accessed on May 20, 2019. 59 See Chris Perez, New York Post, October 8, 2017. 60 Russell Blair, Hartford Courant, October 11, 2017.

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adopted the official self-congratulating narrative America peddles about race. Those opposed to NFL protest are also unable to hear the cry from another person because their ears are tone deaf and they fail to see what is hidden in plain sight. The cognitive dissonance caused by protesting athletes is too much to take. It interrupts and blocks the spectacle and roar of the crowd and causes a recoil effect that ironically casts the protestors engaged in an arguably minimal act of peaceful protest as public enemies. By excluding and attempting to silence black protest before NFL games, the NFL reveals itself as an essentially white space. As a white institution, the NFL speaks a white language the current form of which is the doctrine of “color blindness.”61 By protesting, the players are asserting themselves as BLACK humans. They are refusing to go away and to shut up. As Fanon puts it, “since the Other was reluctant to recognize me, there was only one answer: to make myself known” (BSWM 95, emphasis added). When they raise a clenched fist and when their knee drops, they are not only NFL players. They are black citizens in a racialized polity. Millions of people ignore #BlackLivesMatter and pretend the movement does not exist. Some assert that they are paid protestors and posit that their grievances are irrelevant. The NFL players on center stage of the media-corporate complex are not so easy to ignore, caricature, and misrepresent.62 The player protestors are out of place as protestors and they are a problem precisely because of this. The point seems to be that black athletes can play football on the condition that they keep their mouths shut, privatize their grievances and express them in the appropriate state sanctioned channels for voicing one’s concerns and discontent about injustice (e.g. voting booth), what Fanon called “politics as a sleep-inducing tactic.”63

61 See Ian Hany López, White by Law: The Legal Construction of Race (New York: New York University Press, 2006). 62 See Juliet Hooker, “Black Lives Matter and the Paradoxes of U.S. Black Politics: From Democratic Sacrifice to Democratic Repair,” Political Theory 44 (2016): 448–469. 63 The athlete-protestors are violating the sensibility of the viewers. The failure to do violence to racist perceptions becomes a form of complicity with racism. See Lewis R. Gordon, Fanon and the Crisis of European Man: An Essay on Philosophy and the Human Sciences (New York: Routledge, 1995), p. 79.

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Patriotic rituals make people feel good but they arguably numb the critical faculties via emotional attachment to myths, songs and symbols.64 Dropping a knee in protest steels the show and gently force-feeds America its hollow ideals. It is a way of practicing the universal as something dialectical (not static and closed). People (meaning viewers) are uncomfortable at precisely the moment when they expect to be comfortable. The athlete-protestors are not allowing the viewers to enjoy the game but are reminding viewers that something is seriously wrong in the U.S. today. Fanon told the mother of a child who identifies Fanon as a Negro to “fuck off” (BSWM 94). The NFL players are also creating a scandal, albeit one without a raised middle finger and employing the “f” word, to force the issue or, as Martin Luther King, Jr. put it in reference to his defense of civil disobedience, to “generate a crisis.”65 They are putting into question the authority, hierarchy and knowledge nexus that demands obedience and squashes dissent. The NFL players are asserting an identity, a defiant one, one that cannot be intimidated into silence, one that is arguably “ruining the game” if by game one means an opportunity for thoughtlessness, historical amnesia and complicity with police brutality against people of color. The fact that the NFL players may have the economic wherewithal (at least in the short-term) to weather the penalties and punishment that they might endure for protesting in no way detracts from their courage. The NFL protestors are rendering themselves visible as political agents in spaces that they are creating and defining as political.66 This is a position that aligns (at least partially) with Thomas Jefferson’s “Declaration of Independence,” a document that created its own space of resistance (e.g. declarative speech), upholds the right of resistance and requires naming the “long train of abuses and usurpations” as one of the conditions for entering into political struggle.67 The alignment also conceals a fundamental difference. Liberal universalism, as Fanon points out,

64 See George Kateb, Patriotism and Other Mistakes (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008). 65 See Martin Luther King, Jr., “Letter from a Birmingham Jail,” in Why We Can’t Wait, 2000. For King, “the nation and the world are in dire need of creative extremists” (p. 77). 66 For racism as a form of enforced invisibility, see Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man (New York: Vintage, 1985). See also Andy Cush, “#Black Lives Matter Protesters Hit Whites Where It Truly Hurts: Brunch,” Gawker, January 5, 2015. 67 In the same document, Thomas Jefferson blames the King of Great Britain for “exciting domestic insurrections” and stimulating “merciless Indian savages” into action.

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has always been a problem for black people because they have not been included in its warm embrace (e.g. exclusion clauses; exceptions; status as property and non-persons; state’s rights). The athlete-protestors are asserting a counter-universal, or as I put it earlier, a dialectical universal. It is not a rejection of universality but an attempt to transform universality into a political practice. By taking a step back from procedural-institutional modes of political engagement and dropping a knee, the athletes are opening a space for political struggle. Universalism without the dialectical dimension is a tactic used to justify racism while simultaneously rendering it invisible. Via their resistance to being included in a false universal (e.g. patriotic ritual), NFL protestors make it impossible for universalism to mask racism. This is what the dialectical deployment of universality as a political practice names. The universal is not a static ideal but a terrain of struggle. By dropping a knee and raising a fist, the athletes have partially taken the stage away from the corporate sponsors of the NFL who profit off of the collective exuberance and historical amnesia engendered by this concussioninducing sport. In this act of solidarity with other people of color that is drawing attention to the spectacle of black massacre, the players are disrupting the NFL’s profit accumulation party. The protesting players are showing up to the NFL party and they are willing to play the game, but on their own terms. They are using the stage of the sport to criticize the emptiness of the discourse of universality and to appear in public as defiant and black. Their defiance is a way of saying that the universal is an unfulfilled promise. They are saying that the universal is a white one, a form of empty talk, white mythology and collective blindness. The fact that there have been calls to boycott the NFL illustrates the effectiveness of the dropped knee and the threat black agency and subversive pedagogy poses to the white racial order.68 Some viewers simply refuse to acknowledge the legitimacy of black agency expressed in any form. Some viewers refuse to acknowledge contemporary racism, police brutality and systemic abuse of people of color. They employ the one-dimensional narrative provided by the mainstream media that a lot of progress exists for people of color and the players are simply being disrespectful to the flag and to veterans. The athlete-protestors are forcing a shift in perspective, that is, they are trying to shatter the complicity of the average NFL viewer with racial oppression via historical amnesia, thoughtlessness and indifference. 68 See Richard Morgan, “Group Calls for Boycott of NFL on Veteran’s Day Weekend,” New York Post, November 11, 2017.

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They are drawing attention to the problem of racial injustice. The player protestors are engaging in a subversive pedagogical act designed to make viewers feel uncomfortable.

Conclusion In a recent report, a FBI terrorism unit stated that “black identity extremists” posed a violent threat.69 This is nothing new for it is only an attempt to criminalize all forms of black agency and activism and define manifestations of it as always existing outside legitimate forms of democratic politics. To counter this top-down criminal-managerial approach to interpreting black activism, as well as the medical-therapeutic one that sees black agency as always essentially pathological, Juliet Hooker recently suggested that rioting is a “form of democratic redress for black citizens.” For Hooker, rioting allows “black citizens to express their pain and make their losses visible to a racial order that demands that they sacrifice both by not expressing anger and grief at said losses, and also by peacefully acquiescing to them.” By seeing the democratic potential in rioting, Hooker goes on to say that this could “rescue contemporary black politics from the strategic dead-ends produced by the enshrinement of a romantic narrative of the civil rights movement as an exemplary moment when racial progress was achieved via political activism that fully acquiesced to liberal democratic norms.”70 Theoretically, Hooker may be right. Practically, the defense of rioting (or seeing the “democratic potential” in it) strikes me as unwise in our current political context when simply standing near a protest (which is then renamed a riot) can lead to an arrest, imprisonment and torture while in custody.71 To bring this back to subversive forms of pedagogy, perhaps educators can take Hooker’s advice but try to replicate conditions in the classroom (as an experiment) that generate frustration so as to bring students to the brink of an uprising. The goal would be to create an experience of racial contingency as a new form of enlightenment (e.g. the racial order is not 69 See Sam Levin, “FBI Terrorism Unit Says ‘Black Identity Extremists’ Pose a Violent Threat,” The Guardian, October 6, 2017. 70 See Juliet Hooker, “Black Lives Matter and the Paradoxes of U.S. Black Politics: From Democratic Sacrifice to Democratic Repair,” Political Theory 44 (2016): 464–465. 71 See Sean Rossman, “Free Speech or Destruction: First Trump Inauguration Protestors Go on Trial,” USA Today, November 20, 2017.

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fixed and eternal but can be challenged and changed) as opposed to perpetuating white privilege via status quo perpetuating discourses of merit, color blindness and Western superiority.72 This could be accomplished through exercises involving arbitrary authority, examples on YouTube of police brutality, data on the life chances of black Americans and a bottom-up perspective that helps students see and feel what the world looks like from the perspective of those positioned on the bottom. The point of subversive pedagogy is to try to provoke students to fight back peacefully and assert their own agency in response to various forms of injustice in the classroom. Then the class can reflect on various forms of resistance as political modes of democratic citizenship. This activity that combines how the experience of racial oppression feels with modes of fighting back may lead, as Leonard and Porter argue in their article on Fanon and pedagogy, to “knowing each other more fully as complex human beings,” especially for white students who are often “racially illiterate.”73 I propose the following four provocations that constitute the subversive pedagogical lessons of Frantz Fanon: (1) Political scientists are complicit with racial injustice if they fail to challenge white privilege via data on the life chances for people of color and reading materials that expose the doctrine of color blindness as a tactic of mystification (2) If no one is uncomfortable during a dialogue about racial injustice, the conversation is perpetuating white privilege (3) Bottom-up pedagogical approaches based on logic and reasoning are needed to challenge white privilege. This will help to ventilate assumptions about race, especially the presumption of white innocence.74 (4) The American culture of political avoidance continues to destroy the chance for productive dialogue about racial injustice.75 Structural 72 For Fanon, universality would not take the form of the imposition of European ideas and values but “resides in this decision to recognize and accept the reciprocal relativism of different cultures” (TAR 44). For an attempt to develop a post-colonial universal, see Jacques Derrida, The Other Heading: Reflections on Today’s Europe, trans. Pascale-Anne Brault and Michael B. Naas (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1992). 73 For a discussion of white innocence, see Lawrie Balfour, The Evidence of Things Not Said: James Baldwin and the Promise of American Democracy (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2001). See also Zeus Leonardo and Ronald K. Porter, “Pedagogy of Fear: Toward a Fanonian Theory of ‘Safety’ in Race Dialogue,” Race, Ethnicity and Education 13 (2010): 153, 154. 74 For these and related themes, see Leonardo and Porter (2010): 139–157. 75 For these and related themes, see Nina Eliasoph, Avoiding Politics: How Americans Pro-

duce Apathy in Everyday Life (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998). See also Nikol

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analysis is needed. These provocations rest on the following assumption: The problem of racial injustice must become a militant commitment to crash the thoughtless celebration and make everyone feel uncomfortable that African Americans are treated like a colonized population in the U.S. I am not saying that colonialism in Algeria is identical to the American form of racism. However, there are enough similarities to lead us to include Fanon’s post-colonial subversive pedagogical tactics (e.g. discomfort; visceral learning; confrontation) in the fight against racial injustice. For Fanon wants only one thing: “May the subjugation of man by man cease” (BSWM 206). The first step needed for this is the destruction of the authority, hierarchy and knowledge nexus and the top-down epistemology perpetuated by the doctrine of color blindness.

Alexander-Floyd, “Critical Race Pedagogy: Teaching About Race and Racism Through Legal Learning Strategies,” PS: Political Science and Politics 41:1 (January 2008): 183–188.

CHAPTER 6

Teaching Political Theory ONLINE at a “Hispanic Serving Institution”

Abstract This chapter challenges the critiques of online learning by authors who see it as a negative sign of the corporatization of the university, a drift to substandard learning and a threat to democracy. Drawing on my experience teaching online, I argue teaching theory in an online format is an effective way to explore a variety of political perspectives, foster critical thinking, empower students to find their critical voice and employ experiential/service learning. Teaching political theory online is also a way to give access to first-generation and non-traditional students who may not be able to attend face-to-face (F2F) classes because of work and family obligations. Finally, teaching political theory online can shatter the authority, hierarchy and knowledge nexus and open pedagogy to the practice of equality.

One of my colleagues told me there was nothing I could do to change his mind that online learning was a horrible practice. For him, it spelled doom for students, faculty, the university and the world. At a department meeting, he said he would ensure Introduction to Political Theory Online, the course I designed and wanted to teach, would not achieve sufficient enrollment. Another one of my colleagues advised political science majors and told students which courses to take. Just like the former department chair, he opposed online learning. I asked him if he would at least read my © The Author(s) 2020 W. W. Sokoloff, Political Science Pedagogy, Critical Political Theory and Radical Practice, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-23831-5_6

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syllabus so I could prove to him that it was rigorous. He agreed and claimed that the course did in fact look challenging. The next time I offered it, the course failed to make sufficient enrollment. I suspected sabotage. Over the last number of years, things have changed and my online course runs on a regular basis. To get to this point, though, I have had to overcome my own reservations about online learning, learn how to do it well and carve a space for teaching online without alienating colleagues. As time goes on, I have learned that the online classroom can contain critical, radical and utopian moments. In my online courses, my goal is to stimulate student voice, produce defiant forms of subjectivity, enact everyday utopianism and subvert hierarchy. In addition to trying to stimulate a discussion about teaching political theory online, this chapter connects to my general theory of radical political theory pedagogy as the disruption of the authority, hierarchy and knowledge nexus. Via online learning, I open pedagogy to the practice of equality. If you are opposed to e-learning, then you may want to consider skipping this chapter. If you are somewhat skeptical but open to learning more about online learning, then please read on. I was also reluctant about teaching political theory online. After all, I am a political theorist. I earned a Ph.D. in the northeast. I enjoy speaking with students about books. I decided to try teaching online because I was working at an adult serving educational institution that was moving the curriculum to blended and online delivery modalities. The goal was to increase access to a liberal arts education for students who could not attend brick and mortar universities. I also wanted to have a job in the rapidly changing realm of higher education. I needed to expand my skill set. Finally, I wanted to have a basis for evaluating how effective online learning was before I condemned it. The online revolution in higher education is a fait accompli. More and more students are taking their college courses online.1 Major universities offer online degrees. Given this fact, how can educators thrive in the rapidly changing environment characterized by greater reliance on e-learning and digital communication? How can students become empowered as democratic citizens via online learning? Finally, how can online learning be co-opted by political theorists for a radical politics of democratic transformation? Just like anything else, online courses can be a disaster and no learning can take place. Someone I know who earned an online business 1 See Jordan Friedman, “Study: More Students Are Enrolling in Online Courses,” U.S. News and World Report, January 11, 2018.

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degree at the University of Phoenix told me he did not read anything to earn the degree. However, online learning can also be a utopian experience and experiment that subverts the neoliberal university. As Romand Coles puts it, “we have too often avoided asking how we might create interfaces between radical democratic dynamics and neoliberal dynamics in ways that enable us to co-opt some of the latter in ways that enhance the former in potentially transformative ways.”2 This chapter challenges the entrenched position, especially among political theorists, that online learning is a suspect practice. For me, online learning is a key aspect of a general theory of radical political theory pedagogy because it disrupts the authority, hierarchy and knowledge nexus and reinvents pedagogy as the practice of equality. To be more specific, e-learning can be mobilized to empower students to be discerning readers, critical thinkers and defiant democratic citizens. It can also create a space for student voice in ways that are superior to F2F teaching. As I have already indicated, most of what I had heard about e-learning from colleagues where I currently teach has been negative. Just about every week someone in my department sent out an email with a blog about how horrible online learning was. The message was clear. It would ultimately destroy faculty and obliterate the university. Online learning was a gift of death from hell. Some scholarship on online learning is also quite critical. Arthur Versluis and David F. Noble, respectively, argue online learning lowers academic standards, de-professionalizes the faculty and panders to the consumerstudent thereby progressively disempowering the faculty.3 At the end of the day, faculty are intimidated into towing the corporate party line. Quality education dies because of the new online Corporate University. UC Berkeley political theorist Wendy Brown is also critical of online learning. In Undoing the Demos: Neoliberalism’ s Stealth Revolution, Brown claims online learning is a symptom of a broader problem whereby market rationality has taken over all aspects of life. Online education as a symptom of market rationality threatens learning and thus democracy. For Brown, online courses utilize casual adjunct labor who must become entertainers

2 Romand Coles, Visionary Pragmatism, 2016, p. 118. 3 See Arthur Versluis, “Virtual Education and the Race to the Bottom,” Academic Questions,

2004. See also David F. Noble, Digital Diploma Mills: The Automation of Higher Education (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2003).

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and are not committed to real student learning.4 Learning becomes an exercise in efficiency and accelerates to the point of meaningless. With the online revolution, faculty lose control of the curriculum. Online learning thus flags a broader problem of educational decline and the death of discerning and defiant democratic citizens. Seaton Patrick Tarrant and political theorist Leslie Paul Thiele also criticize online learning. For them, “preparing students for citizenship is generally neglected in the push for online education.”5 Technologically mediated communication threatens the development of the skills needed for a democratic society. For them, online learning prevents embodied experiential interactions between teachers and students.6 This, in turn, impoverishes the civic skill development of students rooted in experiential and relational activities that require embodiment. For them, embodied learning, not online learning, is the key to the education of empowered citizens. With F2F communication, a participant can observe body language and other cues that “supply the contextual information needed for the proper interpretation of the spoken word.”7 Online learning renders this impossible. Other authors make the case for the benefits of online learning. This more general research on online learning points to increased student satisfaction, quality learning and greater flexibility.8 When I tried to find research on teaching political theory online, though, I searched in vain. There is almost nothing published on innovative ways to teach political 4 See Wendy Brown, Undoing the Demos: Neoliberalism’s Stealth Revolution (New York: Zone Books, 2015), pp. 183–194. 5 See Seaton Patrick Tarrant and Leslie Paul Thiele, “The Web We Weave: Online Education and Democratic Prospects”; New Political Science 36 (2014): 538–555. 6 For Tarrant and Thiele, “education for democratic citizenship entails students acknowledging their social responsibilities, identifying means of involvement for responsible agents of change, and developing values such as trust, empathy, motivation, and commitment”, 2014, p. 540. 7 Tarrant and Thiele, 2014, p. 548. 8 See, for instance, Simon Dudley, “Why Online Learning Is More Valuable Than Tradi-

tional College,” Wired, https://www.wired.com/insights/2013/11/why-online-learningis-more-valuable-than-traditional-college/#start-of-content. See also Janni Aragon, “Technologies and Pedagogy: How YouTubing, Social Networking, and Other Web Sources Complement the Classroom,” Feminist Collections 28 (2007). Carol S. Botsch and Robert E. Botsch, “Audiences and Outcomes in Online and Traditional American Government Classes: A Comparative Two-Year Case Study,” PS: Political Science and Politics 34 (2001): 135–141. Kathleen Dolan, “Comparing Modes of Instruction: The Relative Efficacy of On-Line and In-Person Teaching for Student Learning,” PS: Political Science and Politics (April 2008).

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theory online. My suspicion is that online learning challenges a shared assumption among political theorists that teaching theory requires F2F contact. Online learning also challenges the basis of the traditional university as the transmission of knowledge to students via the charisma and expertise of the professor via F2F interaction. In what follows, I defend teaching political theory online because it requires theorists to reinvent political theory pedagogy beyond the shadow of the authority, hierarchy and knowledge nexus that constitutes the identity of the traditional university. I argue that the online pedagogical delivery can lead to innovative ways of teaching political theory. Along the way, I also respond to the objections advanced by critics of online learning. It is important to point out many of the critiques of online learning are based on the assumption that university students are eighteen to twentytwo attending residential colleges and universities. However, eighteen to twenty-two-year-old students only constitute a portion of students today.9 If this demographic is taken as the norm, and we ignore the needs of adult and non-traditional students, we will create a university that is even more exclusive and elitist than it already is. E-learning contains an undeniable egalitarian aspect because it expands access to education. Contrary to popular belief among many academics in the ivory tower, the egalitarianism of e-learning is also compatible with educational excellence. Teaching political theory online is a way to improve the dialogic skills of students, build contacts with community groups, foster critical thinking and negotiate disagreement every week. Online courses also compel students to take greater responsibility for their education. I have taught political theory courses F2F, as blended/hybrid courses and as strictly online courses for over a decade. My defense of online teaching is also a result of reading scholarship on the pros and cons of e-learning and competing forms of pedagogical practices. Even though I value F2F interaction, it is important to realize that this is not always possible. Additionally, quality F2F interaction in the classroom may not happen as frequently as critics of online seem to suggest. Online courses can require deep and sustained dialogue every week and provide students with the intellectual architecture to become critical thinkers and engaged citizens. Online courses can also require students to extend and apply what they learn to 9 See Karl McDonnell, “Addressing the Changing Demographics of the New College Student,” https://evolllution.com/attracting-students/todays_learner/addressingthe-changing-demographics-of-the-new-college-student/, accessed on August 23, 2018.

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service learning and community engagement projects. Finally, online courses can require deep and meaningful engagement with reading material. This is the result of a combination of course content and the advantages of the online format. To support my defense of online learning, I present and justify my course Introduction to Political Theory that I teach online at UTRGV. Thus far, I have had a positive experience teaching this course. Students report that they had a positive experience in this class. As Teena Gabrielson and Kaitlyn Watts argue, if political theory courses are not available online, “many students – especially nontraditional students – will not have access to the content or practices of the [political science] subfield.”10 They continue: “There has been little (if any) work [meaning scholarship] dedicated to teaching political theory online.”11 Ultimately, my goal is to stimulate a conversation about teaching political theory online. Hence, this chapter is relevant to faculty teaching political theory F2F but are interested in learning more about teaching it online. It will also be relevant for faculty teaching online to non-traditional students, to students who may not speak English as their first language, and to first-generation university students. This chapter will also be relevant to faculty who may only put a part of their political theory courses online (e.g. blended/hybrid courses). Finally, it will be relevant to faculty teaching any political science course online.

Teaching Style Teaching style covers a range of important pedagogical issues including how to teach, what to teach, how to structure the classroom, how much lecture is included (if any), whether students will be allowed to speak (if so, how much, how often and under what constraints/parameters?) and the inclusion of small group activities, debates, film clips, etc. All of these issues are connected to the question of authority and power in the class10 Teena Gabrielson and Kaitlyn Watts, “A Sea of Riches: Teaching an Interdisciplinary Environmental Justice Course Through Political Theory On-Campus and Online,” PS: Political Science and Politics (2014), p. 511. 11 Gabrielson and Watts, 2014, p. 511. Non-findings: I conducted a literature search for books and articles in scholarly journals using J-STOR, Google Scholar, and Academic Search Complete. The key words used for the search were “teaching political theory online.” With the exception of Gabrielson and Watts (2014), no articles and books exist on teaching political theory online.

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room since the instructor ultimately dictates the content and direction of the particular course. How courses are offered is also connected to power relations because, like it or not, pedagogical delivery format restricts (e.g. F2F only) and expands (e.g. online) access to education for individuals and groups who may not be able to attend the university. If we insist that education is only a F2F experience, then we will exclude the growing number of non-traditional students who are unable to attend the traditional university. In both the F2F and online formats, research demonstrates that teaching style is a critical component of effective pedagogy, especially for addressing the needs of non-traditional and first-generation university students.12 It is also important to acknowledge that one’s teaching style and practices may reflect unacknowledged assumptions about who is able to learn, how to reach students and what material should be included on the reading list. The pedagogical delivery model (e.g. F2F; hybrid/blended; online) believed to be best suited to non-traditional students also reflects unstated assumptions about who is able to learn and how. Research shows that it is a mistake to presume, for example, that non-traditional students are more likely to succeed in F2F as opposed to online pedagogical settings.13 In fact, research on educational attainment for African Americans and Latin@s suggests that these demographics have not thrived in educational institutions based primarily on F2F educational contact.14 According to a U.S. Department of Education Office of Civil Rights report, black students are expelled from primary school at a rate of at least three times higher than white students are.15

12 See Jacques Rancière, The Ignorant Schoolmaster: Five Lessons in Intellectual Emancipation, trans. Kristin Ross (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1993); Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, 2010; and bell hooks, Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom (New York: Routledge, 1994). 13 See Carol S. Botsch and Robert E. Botsch, “Audiences and Outcomes in Online and Traditional American Government Classes: A Comparative Two-Year Case Study,” PS: Political Science and Politics 34 (2001). 14 See Victor Rios, Punished: Policing the Lives of Black and Latino Boys (New York: New York University Press, 2011). See also Marcos Pizarro, Chicanas and Chicanos in School: Racial Profiling, Identity Battles, and Empowerment (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2005). See, finally, Christopher G. Robbins, Expelling Hope: The Assault on Youth and the Militarization of Schooling (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2008). 15 See https://www.brookings.edu/research/2017-brown-center-report-part-iii-raceand-school-suspensions/, accessed on May 19, 2019.

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In contrast to the F2F format, the online classroom changes the dynamics of a classroom. It at least partially levels the playing field between students and instructor (e.g. subverts hierarchy). This does not happen automatically. To accomplish this, a high level of student engagement in the discussion forum must be a course requirement. The discussion questions must be framed in ways that invite interpretation and reasoned argumentation as opposed to students being restricted to summarizing course material. Finally, the instructor must participate in the discussion (as moderator not holder of “objective knowledge”). The online discussion forum draws students into conversations who may not otherwise speak in a F2F setting. Some students lack confidence, believe that teachers are authority figures and fear public humiliation for asking a question. The online discussion forum is less intimidating than discussions that take place F2F. In addition to a carefully calibrated discussion forum, educators that view non-traditional students as individuals who bring a lot to the classroom in terms of life experiences are more likely to be successful reaching this demographic.16 According to Carol S. Botsch and Robert E. Botsch, “web classes may be more effective in improving the general factual knowledge of lower GPA students because such classes inevitably place more responsibility on students who are likely to be passive in more traditional classes.”17 This is a good point. However, we need to keep in mind that knowledge-based pedagogical approaches requiring students to memorize facts suck the life and joy out of learning. These practices position the instructor as the ultimate authority, exactly what I criticize and put into 16 See Dolores Delgado Bernal, “Critical Race Theory, Latino Critical Theory, and Critical Race-Gendered Epistemologies: Recognizing Students of Color as Holders and Creators of Knowledge,” Qualitative Inquiry 8 (2002): 105–126; Tyrone C. Howard, “Culturally Relevant Pedagogy: Ingredients for Critical Teacher Reflection,” Theory into Practice 42 (2003); Gloria Ladson-Billings, “Toward a Theory of Culturally Relevant Pedagogy,” American Educational Research Journal 32 (1995): 465–491; and Barry A. Osborne, “Practice into Theory: Culturally Relevant Pedagogy for Students We Have Marginalized and Normalized,” Anthropology & Education Quarterly 27 (1996): 285–314. See also Marcus Pizarro, Chicanos and Chicanas in School: Racial Profiling, Identity Battles, and Empowerment (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2005). 17 Carol S. Botsch and Robert E. Botsch, “Audiences and Outcomes in Online and Traditional American Government Classes: A Comparative Two-Year Case Study,” PS: Political Science and Politics 34 (2001): 141.

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question in Chapter 2 via Derridean textual interpretation, Chapter 3 via the inversion of the Socratic Method and Chapter 4 via the prison field trip.18 1. Organization of the Course and Course Content Like my other courses, Introduction to Political Theory (online) is broken down into weeks. Each week has a specific link that students click to access that week’s objectives, assignments, lecture and activities. Assignments for the course include a quiz on the syllabus; weekly discussion forum; three argumentative essays ranging from two to eight pages; eight quizzes on the reading material; a current events journal; a community engagement project; and a self-reflective class participation statement. I require students to complete a variety of assignments to make the course appealing to different learning styles. I also want to ensure that students are improving their reading and writing skills via argumentative essays, connecting theory to practice and participating in weekly discussions. The assignments satisfy the course learning objectives.19 The required readings for the course are: • Gloria Anzaldúa, Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza. • Gregory Boyle, Tattoos on the Heart: The Power of Boundless Compassion. • Andrea Dworkin, Heartbreak: The Political Memoir of a Feminist Militant. • Niccolò Machiavelli, Prince. • Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, Communist Manifesto. • Henry David Thoreau, “On Civil Disobedience.” • Plato, “Apology.”

18 See Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, 2010; bell hooks, Teaching to Transgress, 1994; and Jacques Rancière, The Ignorant Schoolmaster, 1991. 19 The learning objectives include the following: Demonstrate knowledge of political theorists. Evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of core concepts in political theory. Apply the ideas and themes in this class to contemporary political issues and current events. Apply the ideas and themes in this class to a local community issue. Drawing on what you learned in this course, create a new political order.

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• Martin Luther King, Jr., “Letter from a Birmingham Jail.”20 I include these authors because they explore a wide range of political concepts including race, gender, ethnicity, identity, compassion, power, class, violence, dissent and others.21 Many of these authors are part of the canon. I also include authors not part of the canon so that students can explore issues and themes from non-traditional perspectives. Over the years, students have informed me that one or several of the texts were particularly memorable and important for their intellectual development. 2. Discussion Forum Controversial and provocative online discussion questions comprise the heart and soul of online learning and lead to a participatory learning environment where, ironically, no student can hide.22 The online discussion forum also avoids many of the drawbacks of the Socratic Method addressed in Chapter 3. In my course, discussion forum participation is required and heavily weighted in the final grade. Everyone is required to participate. A single student or small group of students cannot dominate the discussion. In terms of examples of discussion forum prompts, one of the discussion questions I include in my course is the following: “A Mexican-American

20 Gloria Anzaldúa, Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza, 3rd Edition (San Francisco: Aunt Lute Books, 2007); Gregory Boyle, Tattoos on the Heart: The Power of Boundless Compassion (New York: Free Press, 2010); Andrea Dworkin, Heartbreak: The Political Memoir of Feminist Militant (New York: Basic Books, 2002); Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince, trans. George Bull (New York: Penguin, 2003); Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The Communist Manifesto, trans. Samuel Moore (New York: Penguin, 2002); Henry David Thoreau, Civil Disobedience and Other Essays (New York: Dover, 1993); Plato, The Last Days of Socrates, trans. Hugh Tredennick and Harold Tarrant (New York: Penguin, 2003); and Martin Luther King, Jr., Why We Can’t Wait (New York: Signet, 2000). 21 See Joel Kassiola, “Effective Teaching and Learning in Introductory Political Theory: It All Starts with Challenging and Engaging Assigned Readings,” PS: Political Science and Politics 40 (2007): 783–787. Kassiola states: “We should not fall prey to lower and condescending expectations that dull our beginning courses in political theory” (p. 787). 22 See Gabrielson and Watts, 2014. See also the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) statement on academic freedom pertaining to controversial material at https://www.aaup.org/report/1940-statement-principles-academic-freedomand-tenure, accessed on November 2, 2018. “Teachers are entitled to freedom in the classroom in discussing their subject, but they should be careful not to introduce into their teaching controversial matter which has no relation to their subject.”

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insists that his name is John and not Juan. What would Gloria Anzaldúa say about that? Politely disagree with Anzaldúa. How would Anzaldúa respond to your objection? Include textual citations as evidence. Please respond to at least three classmates. Please politely disagree with at least one classmate and provide reasons and evidence to back up what you say.” Another discussion question reads: “Argue that Spanglish [‘code switching’ and/or mixing English and Spanish] is a good linguistic practice. What would Anzaldúa say about your argument? Include textual citations as evidence. Please respond to at least three classmates. Then, argue that Spanglish is a bad language. How would Anzaldúa respond? Include textual citations as evidence. Please be sure to respond to three classmates. Please politely disagree with at least one classmate and provide reasons and evidence to back up what you say.” With these discussion prompts, I am asking students to make connections between the course material and their lived experiences growing up and/or having relocated to a border region of the U.S., where the population is almost exclusively Latin@. Students are required to post responses to the discussion prompts throughout the week (first one by Wednesday, second post by Saturday, third and fourth posts by Sunday). Discussion post requirements in terms of depth, length and content knowledge are in an evaluation rubric. Students are required to disagree with one another. They thereby acquire the capacity to voice disagreement and provide reasons and evidence to back up what they say. As one student put it in his evaluation of Introduction to Political Theory Online: Unlike other online courses that I have taken before that required online discussion posts, usually one per week, Dr. S required a minimum of four posts per week. This created some rather memorable discussions, which in my opinion is what made the actual material take on a life of its own. I felt like there was a strong rapport between the students and Dr. S; he often would comment on posts throughout the week and ask questions on our ideas and really nurtured the concepts to grow organically. I am thankful that Dr. S required so much activity in the discussion forums because it allowed me to formulate and express my thoughts in a non-threatening environment. This way provided every student a voice to share and a means to participate in the discussion. Every in-person class should have an online discussion forum to participate in. (Student testimonial, Introduction to Political Theory, May 15, 2016, emphasis added)

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Every instructor knows that stimulating thoughtful classroom discussion is never easy. Classes based around lecture and power point arguably render it unlikely if not impossible. Additionally, I have found that confident students in a F2F setting can dominate the discussion and some students may not say a single word for an entire semester, though this varies based on class size. The online discussion forum can fruitfully change the F2F classroom culture where the professor is the sun while students simply gravitate and hover around his/her center of gravity, while other students disappear from the solar system entirely. In my view, online discussion forums level the playing field (e.g. subvert hierarchy) between all participants in the class. Every student is required to participate and they do participate because their grade depends on it. The online discussion forum also leads to more reflective and thoughtful class participation because participants have time to reflect on what they post as opposed to simply blurting out a response in class. As long as discussion post parameters are clearly articulated, the discussion topics contain issues relevant to the lives of students, and they invite interpretation, quality discussion takes place on a regular basis. I have found that culturally relevant subject matter in the discussion forum leads students to forget about the minimum discussion post requirements and engage in discussion throughout the entire week. Additionally, unlike F2F teaching where there is no record of the quick verbal exchanges between instructor and student, instructors can easily evaluate how the discussion is going from week to week because all of the posts are saved and archived. 3. Argumentative Essay Assignments My essay assignments require students to write argumentative essays that demonstrate deep and meaningful engagement with reading material. I allow students a wide degree of freedom to formulate their own argument and write about topics that are important and relevant to their own lives. This is an example of an essay prompt for my online class: “Drawing on the work of all the authors we have read in this course, design an ideal political order. Please include at least one citation (and explain what it means and why you included it in your essay) for each author we have read in this class. Please incorporate at least one current event in your essay and reference your community engagement project. Advance your argument through a critique of the authors we read in this class.” The point of this essay assignment is to give students freedom to create a new political order but

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within the parameters provided by Socrates, Machiavelli, Marx, Dworkin, Anzaldúa, Boyle, King and Thoreau. As they build their ideal political order, students are also required to criticize and/or improve upon the ideas of the authors we read in class. Hence, they develop their argument through an analysis of the limits of the authors we read. Students are also required to email me their thesis statement so I can offer them constructive feedback. Throughout the semester, I have a significant amount of back and forth dialogue via email with students pertaining to what they are arguing. 4. A Culturally Relevant Curriculum Research shows that a culturally relevant curriculum is an essential component to student success.23 The point of a culturally relevant curriculum is simple. Course material must speak to the issues that are salient to our students so that they are able to form a personal connection to it. Additionally, instructors should know as much as possible about the context and lives of the students they are trying to teach so they can design courses in ways that appeal to and are relevant to them. Many of my students have shared with me that American Government courses are incredibly boring, possibly the most boring in the entire university curriculum. The problem is not the students. The problem pertains to what counts as the material. As Jessica Lavariega-Monforti and Adam McGlynn demonstrate, introduction to American government textbooks include relatively little about the contributions made by Latin@s to American politics.24 It is no wonder that students at the “Hispanic Serving Institution” where I teach are bored in American government classes. Research shows that a culturally relevant curriculum increases the likelihood of students taking an interest in the course material. It thereby improves the likelihood of student success.25 5. Community Engagement Projects and Experiential Learning 23 See Howard, 2003; Ladson-Billings, 1995; Osborne, 1996; See also Renée SmithMaddox and Daniel G. Solórzano, “Using Critical Race Theory, Paulo Freire’s ProblemSolving Method, and Case Study Research to Confront Race and Racism in Education,” Qualitative Inquiry 8 (2002). 24 See Jessica Lavariega Monforti and Adam McGlynn, “Aquí Estamos? A Survey of Latino Portrayal in Introductory U.S. Government and Politics Textbooks,” PS: Political Science and Politics 43 (2010): 309–316. 25 See Howard, 2003; Ladson-Billings, 1995; Osborne, 1996.

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Community engagement projects and experiential learning are a great way for students to connect theory with practice and to cultivate embodied forms of learning and interaction that are important to democratic citizenship.26 In my online theory class, I require students to write a community engagement project and connect it to course concepts and material. In the syllabus, I provide a list of possible groups they could learn more about (e.g. Justice for Our Neighbors [JFON], Mujeres Unidas, Projecto Azteca, La Union del Peublo Entero [LUPE], Planned Parenthood, National Organization of Women [NOW] and Infinite Love). Students can also select something else. This assignment bridges theory with practice. It also helps me learn more about the lives of my students in terms of what students care about and the types of volunteer work they are doing. Learning about the lives of students through course assignments re-positions students in important ways. Students become individuals who bring something valuable to the table in terms of knowledge and experience.27 This disrupts the top-down epistemology of knowledge intrinsic to the authority, hierarchy and knowledge nexus. Both the requirements of the discussion forum and the required interactions with a community group prevent students from hiding in the back of the classroom. The virtual aspect actually leads to a higher level of engagement. I agree with Tarrant and Thiele that embodied forms of learning contribute to the development of the skill set needed by students to become better democratic citizens.28 However, embodied forms of learning can also take place in online courses. That the course is online does not mean that all aspects of the course are necessarily online. They are correct to suggest that the rush to online learning has neglected the experiential learning aspect. However, it is not difficult to add this aspect to an online course. 6. Course Design In addition to clear learning outcomes, precise instructions and evaluation rubrics for assignments (aspects of online course design recommended by

26 See Experiencing Citizenship: Concepts and Models for Service-Learning in Political Science, eds. Richard M. Battistoni and William E. Hudson (Washington, DC: American Association for Higher Learning, 1997). 27 See Dolores Delgado Bernal, 2002. 28 See Tarrant and Thiele, 2014.

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Quality Matters [QM]), it is important to design an online course that is easy to navigate. Based on my experience, it is also best to avoid complicated technology like wikis, instant messaging and other synchronous learning practices. Wikis create a pointless online student free for all where students create a shared document but one with questionable academic value. Instant messaging negates the benefits of asynchronous learning (e.g. flexibility). Additionally, instant back and forth messaging does not give students sufficient time to reflect on what they say before they say it. Finally, given the redundancy in an online course recommended by instructional designers, online courses can become unmanageable (e.g. with contradictory statements, conflicting due dates and different instructions for the same assignment) as they evolve over time. Instructors must remember that something said in one place in the course is also at five other locations. It becomes time consuming to change an essay prompt because it is included in eight different locations in the online course. If one iteration of the prompt is even slightly different from another, this leads to confusion. To prevent this problem, I inform students that the syllabus for the course is the master document that overrides all other statements in various locations in the online course. All instructors face challenges in both F2F and online teaching settings. The question is the same irrespective of the particular delivery modality for teaching. How can educators empower students to become active and self-directed learners with confidence as well as individuals with the needed discernment and commitment to the public good essential for a democratic society? A student in my theory course said this: “Before initially beginning the class I found myself feeling sorry that I was going to be taking a class with such a highly recommended professor online instead of in person. I consider myself fortunate to be able to tell you how wrong that assumption was.”29 In terms of the quality of the work students complete, the writing required in the discussion forum on topics that connect to essay writing prompts allow students to practice writing for the argumentative essays in the discussion forum in ways that led to improvements in their essays. Because of this, the quality of student writing in my online courses is better than the writing in my F2F courses. My discussion prompts require disagreement. This helps students understand via constant practice that argu-

29 Student testimonial, Introduction to Political Theory, May 15, 2016.

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mentation requires refuting the arguments and counter-arguments raised by a classmate with reasoning and evidence. This develops complex analytical and critical thinking skills since students are required to see an issue from a variety of perspectives and carefully weigh the merits of conflicting positions. I recently surveyed my students in an upper-division Blended/Hybrid political theory course to gauge what students thought was valuable and/or lacking in a course that combines F2F instruction with an online component. Specifically, I asked students whether they thought the online discussion forum leads to greater learning in comparison to courses that do not have an online discussion forum. Eighty percent of the students surveyed (n  20) claimed the online discussion forum enhances their learning of course material in comparison to classes that do not have an online discussion forum.30 The results of the survey confirm a point made by Carl A. Raschke: “The openness of serious intellectual conversation in a web-based discussion forum can be even more important than a typical seminar, where the professor does most of the talking.”31

Conclusion What did I learn teaching Introduction to Political Theory online? First, I have to employ a wider variety of teaching practices every week in an online course than in a F2F course. Second, working under the constraints of an online format leads to creativity and innovation but only if one has gained the necessary skill set. That is to say, there is no way around investing time in a few trainings and workshops dedicated to online learning. After a bit of practice and technical training, one can also learn as one goes and pick up effective practices through trial and error. Third, I give more thought to discussion questions that stimulate disagreement and greater interest in the subject matter in both F2F and online courses. A culturally relevant curriculum also increases the likelihood of students taking an interest in the subject matter. At least six of the weeks in the semester in my Introduction to Political Theory course consist of culturally relevant material. Fourth, I try to design my courses in ways that appeal to the students who need

30 Survey conducted May 1, 2017. 31 See Carl A. Raschke, The Digital Revolution and the Coming of the Postmodern University

(New York: RoutledgeFalmer, 2003), p. 96.

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a university degree the most, namely, first-generation and under-served students who I attempt to empower without ever meeting them F2F. Teaching and/or taking an online course may not work for everyone. Students’ interest in taking online courses nevertheless continues to go up.32 However, even in an online course, some students do not participate in the discussion forum, some students do not complete assignments and some students fail the course. When I ask students a question via email, sometimes they ignore me. This can be frustrating. Nevertheless, my Introduction to Political Theory course arguably delivers a liberal arts education dedicated to improving the analytical and critical thinking skills of my students via unconventional means. Teaching online required me to reinvent myself as an educator, learn a new skill set, create a virtual educational experience for students, and this has arguably made me a better F2F instructor. Ironically, many of the prevailing critiques of online learning reflect investments in practices and institutions that might not be relevant to and speak to the needs of the growing number of non-traditional students. Given this, insisting on F2F teaching as the only appropriate way to teach political theory strikes me as irresponsible and motivated by a fading dream of a mythical “golden age” of education characterized by F2F contact in a medieval cloister. The times have changed. Additionally, it is false to assume that online courses do not contain embodied and experiential modes of learning that are crucial for the development of the skill set required for empowered democratic citizens. Teaching online does not require students to sit in front of a computer and never get up. The claim that online courses are not serious and that online instructors are not committed to student learning depends on the instructor, not the delivery modality. As opposed to complaining about a loss of faculty control of the curriculum and substandard online courses, I would recommend that faculty teach online in order to resist and struggle to preserve faculty control of the curriculum and create online courses that are high-quality learning experiences. In conclusion, teaching political theory in an online delivery format can be an effective way to pique student interest in the subject matter, foster critical thinking about social, political and economic issues and create a positive learning experience for student and instructor. Teaching political theory online can also be an effective way to empower non-traditional students and create an egalitarian space for dialogue and disagreement. There 32 See Jordan Friedman, “Study: More Students Are Enrolling in Online Courses,” U.S. New and World Report, January 11, 2018, accessed on August 8, 2018.

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are also challenges pertaining to teaching political theory online including student retention, difficulty providing adequate support to students who may be first-generation university students not located near campus, the lack of student computer compatibility with current institution delivery platforms and the feeling of isolation that may accompany taking a course online. My defense of teaching political theory online recognizes these challenges but it also recognizes the amazing opportunity for rethinking what it means to teach and create a place for the voices of students. My general theory of radical political theory pedagogy requires educators to employ all means (including online learning) to help students become defiant and discerning democratic citizens. The claim that online education is risking “the prospects for democracy” strikes me as an overstatement.33 There is no guarantee that learning will take place in F2F and online modalities. However, I agree with Raschke that online learning “entails a wholly unprecedented synthesis of intellect, imagination and technical competency.”34 It is unclear whether political theorists will ever embrace online learning. Does online learning kill the professor as the charismatic transmitter of knowledge? Does this signal the end of the university? Is a university still a university with virtual professors? Is online education the ultimate danger to the humanities? In my view, it is time for political theorists to co-opt online learning for radical democratic ends and shatter the authority, hierarchy and knowledge nexus. My general theory of radical political theory pedagogy as the practice of equality sees online learning as playing a role in reinventing political theory pedagogy and empowering students to be defiant, informed and skeptical democratic citizens.

33 See Tarrant and Thiele, 2014, p. 553. 34 See Raschke, 2003, p. 102.

CHAPTER 7

Paulo Freire on Pedagogy and Revolution

Abstract The work of Freire provides a valuable vantage point to reflect on pedagogy as a practice of freedom that undermines the authority, hierarchy and knowledge nexus. Via dialogic praxis, the reinvention of power and permanent revolution, Freire overcomes the “iron law of oligarchy” and charts a path for the future of democracy. He exposes the fundamentalism of the Right and the Left and opens a new future for the emancipatory project. He is thus a central figure who shatters the authority, hierarchy and knowledge nexus and opens the prospect of radical political theory pedagogy as the practice of equality.

At least since Plato who grounded his ideal city on a rigorous series of tests and myth of legitimation to justify hierarchical rule in the Republic, educational institutions are sites of social control.1 Schools also help to sustain the myth of merit, that is, that hard work leads to just desserts. This defuses the

An earlier version of “Paulo Freire on Pedagogy and Revolution” appeared in Confrontational Citizenship: Reflections on Hatred, Rage, Resistance and Revolt (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2017). 1 See Plato, Republic, trans. Grube and Reeve (Indianapolis: Hackett Press, 1992).

© The Author(s) 2020 W. W. Sokoloff, Political Science Pedagogy, Critical Political Theory and Radical Practice, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-23831-5_7

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volatility of extreme inequality, something Aristotle identified as a cause of faction and revolution.2 Thus, educational institutions are political because they operate within a field of broader power relations.3 Through control of the curriculum, establishing correct parameters for teaching/research and promulgating professional norms educational institutions reinforce power relations and cater to the needs of dominant groups.4 The use of violence to beat a population into submission usually signifies the failure of educational (and other ideological) institutions to do their work. If it is true to say that educational institutions have historically been conservative institutions designed to perpetuate the political status quo, how can educational institutions become sites of thoughtful revolutionary change? How can they become places where defiant, informed and skeptical political actors are cultivated? Even though Paulo Freire’s work starts from a space seemingly distant from the official institutions of the political realm, Freire provides a critical understanding of education that has revolutionary implications for politics as well as for the transformation of political science education. Via dialogic praxis, the reinvention of power and permanent revolution, Freire overcomes the ‘iron law of oligarchy’ in the classroom and polity.5 He shatters the authority, hierarchy and knowledge nexus and opens pedagogy to the practice of equality. Freire thereby reconnects local political struggles to the utopian aspiration for democracy without leaders.

2 See Aristotle, Politics, trans. C. D. C. Reeve (Indianapolis: Hackett Press, 1988), Book V. 3 Thomas Hobbes argued that educational institutions serve a valuable function insofar as they can domesticate the passions and perpetuate monarchical rule. See Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, ed. Curley (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Press, 1994). Throughout the modern era, schools operated according to liberal (enlighten the public), Marxist (create a reserve army of labor for the capitalist class), Weberian (professionalize the workforce via credentials) and Foucaultian (employ micro-tactics of domination in order to manage unruly populations) paradigms. See Roger Duncan, “Michel Foucault on Education: A Preliminary Theoretical Overview,” South African Journal of Education 26:2 (2006): 177–187. 4 For Richard Ashcraft, “political scientists have accepted not only a modified market economy as a general model but an ‘ethos of technology.’ The objectives to be achieved through theorizing have been drastically narrowed.” See Richard Ashcraft, “Economic Metaphors, Behavioralism, and Political Theory: Some Observations on the Ideological Uses of Language,” in Western Political Quarterly 30:3 (1997): 323. 5 For the ‘iron law of oligarchy’, see Robert Michels, Political Parties: A Sociological Study of the Tendencies of Modern Democracy, trans. Eden Paul and Cedar Paul (New York, NY: Free Press, 1962), p. 342.

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It is important to note that scholars in the fields of education and sociology, not political science, have been in the forefront of providing critical commentary on Freire’s work.6 My goal is to bring Freire into the conversation on political science pedagogy. To this end, my interpretation of Freire highlights how he advances a vision of pedagogy as the practice of equality. Freire’s utopian hopefulness can help us think our way out of the contemporary impasse in political theory where it is fashionable to argue that we are living in a nightmare where, as Wendy Brown puts it, the “demos have been undone” but no paths are articulated by Brown to challenge this.7 Freire’s work can also broaden the conversation about pedagogy as more political scientists express interest in and conduct research on teaching and learning. Freire, finally, is helpful for exposing the complicity of at least part of the discipline of political science with the political status quo.8

Paulo Freire The Brazilian global educational activist Paulo Freire (1921–1997) is one of the few thinkers in the twentieth century who argued that pedagogical practices are essentially political. This was the result of Freire’s experiences working with the illiterate in the former slave colonies in South America, his time living in the U.S. and in Europe during his exile, his international travel as a public intellectual, and his stint as secretary of education for the city of São Paulo, Brazil. In terms of intellectual influences, Freire was a dialectical thinker who fused Kantian universalism with the humanism of 6 See Sandra Smidt, Introducing Freire: A Guide for Students, Teachers, and Practitioners (New York: Routledge, 2014); Antonia Darder, Freire and Education (New York: Routledge, 2014). See also Henry Giroux, On Critical Pedagogy (New York: Bloomsbury, 2011); bell hooks, Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom (New York: Routledge, 2014); Peter McLaren, Che Guevara, Paulo Freire and the Pedagogy of Revolution (New York: Rowman and Littlefield, 1999); and Donald Macedo, Literacies of Power: What Americans Are Not Allowed to Know (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1994). 7 See Wendy Brown, Undoing the Demos: Neoliberalism’s Stealth Revolution (New York:

Zone Books, 2015). 8 The American Political Science Association defines itself as an organization that is “nonpartisan.” See “The Constitution of the American Political Science Association,” Article II: Purpose, November 3, 2011. As we shall see, proclamations of non-partisanship as well as methodological choices are inescapably political. As Christian Bay put it fifty years ago, “much of the current work on political behavior generally fails to articulate its very real value biases”; see Christian Bay, “Politics and Pseudopolitics: A Critical Evaluation of Some Behavioral Literature,” American Political Science Review 59 (1965): 39.

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the early Marx. Freire connected both aspects in a form of popular “paideia” signifying intellectual emancipation and commitment to the revolutionary transformation of society.9 Freire thus rewrites Kant’s “An Answer to the Question: ‘What is Enlightenment?’” for those who have been beatdown by the authoritarian neoliberal global political order.10 Freire was imprisoned for approximately three months by the Brazilian military junta that seized power in 1964.11 Why? Because Freire taught slum dwellers and the lower classes how to understand their place on the bottom of society objectively, that is, as the by-product of colonialism and decisions of the reigning elite. Even after Freire finally left Brazil, Freire’s reputation as an educational revolutionary, much like Che Guevara, often preceded him. For example, Freire could not enter Haiti. He was arrested in Gabon, Africa. After sixteen years in exile, Freire returned to Brazil in 1980 and continued his work on the humanization of the classroom space and pedagogy as a form of politics. Freire’s commitment to radical democracy, a non-dogmatic Marxist critique of society, and defense of identity politics is clear throughout his writings and leads to a position not of just denouncing injustice but of “announcing a new utopia.”12 Freire is thus a utopian thinker from whom we have a lot to learn because Freire fused critique with the discourse of hope. As Cornel West put it, Freire fused “social theory, moral outrage, and political praxis.”13 Freire thus models how to hold onto one’s

9 Freire states: “The dream of a better world is born from the depths of the bowels of its opposite,” in Pedagogy of Indignation (Boulder, CO: Paradigm Publishers, 2004), p. 121. 10 Immanuel Kant attributes intellectual immaturity to a lack of resolution and courage to use one’s own understanding. Although Freire shares Kant’s defense of intellectual autonomy, dignity of the human person and self-liberation, Freire views intellectual immaturity as the result of political oppression and the material conditions of everyday life, not as something that is self-incurred. See Immanuel Kant, “An Answer to the Question: ‘What Is Enlightenment?’” in Kant: Political Writings, ed. Reiss and trans. Nisbet (New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 1991). 11 See Greg Grandin, “Interview with Noam Chomsky on the Crisis in Central America and Mexico,” The Nation, October 31, 2014. 12 Freire, Pedagogy of Freedom, 1998, p. 74. 13 See Cornel West in Paulo Freire, A Critical Encounter, eds. McLaren and Leonard (New

York, NY: Routledge, 1993), p. xiii. For bell hooks, “Freire’s work affirmed my right as a subject in resistance to define my reality”; bell hooks, Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom, 1994, p. 53.

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integrity in the corporate neoliberal university and how to create strategies for thoughtful political change.14

Neutrality as “Politics” Freire’s reflections on the interrelationship between the political and educational spheres begin with Freire’s rejection of the discourse of neutrality. The discourse of neutrality operates in a variety of spheres but is dedicated to one goal. To prevent real political change and mystify power relationships. For example, neutral formal-legal protections (e.g. rights) celebrated by liberals obscure the way privileged and wealthy groups manipulate the

14 For research on the corporatization and corruption of higher education Kevin B. Smith, The Ideology of Education: The Commonwealth, the Market, and America’s Schools (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2003); James McKeen Cattell, University Control (New York, NY: Science Press, 1913); Thorstein Veblen, The Higher Learning in America: A Memorandum on the Conduct of Universities by Businessmen (New York, NY: Sagamore Press, 1957); Upton Sinclair, The Goose-Step: A Study of American Education, Revised Edition (Pasadena, CA: Privately Printed, 1923); Earl J. McGrath, “The Control of Higher Education in America,” Educational Record 17 (April 1936): 259–272; Hubert Park Beck, Men Who Control Our Universities (New York, NY: King’s Crown Press, 1947); David N. Smith, Who Rules the Universities? An Essay in Class Analysis (New York, NY: Monthly Review Press, 1974); Barbara Ann Scott, Crisis Management in American Higher Education (Westport, CT: Praeger Press, 1983); Clyde W. Barrow, Universities and the Capitalist State: Corporate Liberalism and the Reconstruction of American Higher Education, 1894–1928 (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1990); Sheila Slaughter, The Higher Learning and High Technology: Dynamics of Higher Education Policy Formation (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1990); Wesley Shumar, College for Sale: A Critique of the Commodification of Higher Education (Oxfordshire, UK: Routledge Falmer Press, 1997); Sheila Slaughter and Larry L. Leslie, Academic Capitalism: Politics, Policies and the Entrepreneurial University (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997); Gary Rhodes, Managed Professionals: Unionized Faculty and Restructuring Academic Labor (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1998); Geoffrey White, Ed., Campus, Inc. (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2000); Stanley Aronowitz, The Knowledge Factory (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 2001); Clyde W. Barrow, Sylvie Didou-Aupetit, and John Mallea, Globalisation, Trade Liberalisation, and Higher Education in North America: The Emergence of a New Market Under NAFTA? (Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2003); Sheila Slaughter and Gary Rhoades, Academic Capitalism and the New Economy: Markets, State, and Higher Education (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004); Jennifer Washburn, University Inc.: The Corporate Corruption of Higher Education (New York, NY: Basic Books, 2005); Frank Donoghue, The Last Professors: The Corporate University and the Fate of the Humanities (New York, NY: Fordham University Press, 2008); and Benjamin Ginsberg, The Fall of the Faculty: The Rise of the All-Administrative University and Why It Matters (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2011).

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political system to their advantage. The political state is not neutral. It is an instrument of the ruling class to further their interests.15 The individualistic doctrine of merit and unlimited opportunity celebrated by conservatives teaches people to work hard. According to this view, everyone has an equal chance to succeed. The assumption is that competition between individuals takes place on a level playing field. Anyone can win. This is a myth. The ideology of unlimited opportunity and fair competition ignores the wealth and privilege passed on from one generation to the next that gives certain groups an unfair advantage. The discourse of merit, hard work and just desserts conceals this. No matter how hard poor people work, chances are they will remain poor.16 The doctrine of merit de-politicizes this fact and teaches them that they only have themselves to blame if they fail. Color blindness, the doctrine that one’s color is irrelevant, denies and obscures the presence of racism and the systemic devaluation of black lives in social, economic and political structures.17 It turns racism into a matter of personal prejudice and thereby de-politicizes it. Freire was a fierce critic of the doctrine of neutrality in all of its forms because it was a way to mystify power and privilege and thereby prevent the possibility of political change. For Freire, the belief in neutrality assumes the legitimacy of the status quo. Freire states: “Claiming neutrality does not constitute neutrality; quite the contrary, it helps maintain the status quo.”18 Freire continues: “All educational practice implies an interpretation of man and the world.”19 Because of this, educational practices (e.g. teaching style and definition of research) involve political and value commitments. As Peter McLaren puts it, “the pedagogical is implicated in the political.”20 The

15 See https://democracyjournal.org/magazine/27/how-big-money-corrupts-theeconomy/, accessed on May 19, 2019. 16 Upward social mobility is on the decline. See https://www.businessinsider.com/socialmobility-is-on-the-decline-and-with-it-american-dream-2017-7, accessed on May 19, 2019. 17 See https://www.urban.org/features/structural-racism-america, accessed on May 19, 2019. 18 Freire, Politics of Education: Culture, Power, and Liberation, trans. Macedo (Westport, CT: Bergin & Garvey, 1985), p. 39. 19 Freire, Cultural Action for Freedom (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Educational Review, 2000), p. 13. 20 See Peter McLaren, Che Guevara, Paulo Freire, and the Pedagogy of Revolution (New York: Rowman & Littlefield, 2000).

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denial of the political and value-laden character of educational practices is an outright lie.21 Freire states, “I could never treat education as something cold, mental, merely technical, and without soul.”22 For Freire, education for student and teacher alike involves the whole person, their life history, their political commitments and their aspirations. As Freire puts it, “our presence in the world, which implies choice and decision, is not a neutral presence.”23 In any academic discipline, but especially the social sciences, the fixation on method, technique and the belief in objective knowledge side-steps the fundamental issue, namely, the problem of power as it plays out in the relationship between education and the broader society.24 At its worst, the fixation on method generates uncritical, descriptive and ideological academic disciplines via the de facto endorsement of the political status quo.25 As Freire states, “no educational practice takes place in a vacuum.”26 For

21 By claiming to be scientific, above politics, and non-ideological, behavioralism was a political stance and a form of establishment ideology. See Clyde W. Barrow, “The Political and Intellectual Origins of New Political Science,” New Political Science: A Journal of Politics and Culture (October 2017): 437–472. I disagree with Timothy V. Kaufman’s Osborn who argues that “the threat of behavioralism subsided in the late 1960s and early 1970s”; see “Political Theory as Profession and as Subfield?” Political Research Quarterly 63 (2010): 657. Much of political theory, according to John Gunnell, “manifests an elitist, antidemocratic bias that echoes its origins in the moralism of nineteenth-century political science and in the scientism of its early twentieth-century successors” in Gunnell, “Professing Political Theory,” Political Research Quarterly 63 (2010): 678. 22 Freire, Pedagogy of Freedom, 1998, p. 129. See David Easton, The Political System: An Enquiry into the State of Political Science (New York, NY: Alfred A. Knopf, 1953) for a compelling example of the yearning for a scientific understanding of political life. For a recent example, see “An Interview with Lynn Vavreck,” in PS: Political Science and Politics 48, Supplement S1 (2015): 43–46. In this interview, Vavreck states: “We need our young scholars doing science” (p. 44). She continues: “The average person is not going to read a scientific publication and understand or track what the finding is…That’s okay” (p. 43). 23 Freire, Pedagogy of Indignation, 2004, p. 7. 24 See John G. Gunnell, “The Reconstitution of Political Theory: David Easton, Behav-

ioralism, and the Long Road to System,” Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences 49:2 (2013): 190–210 for a historical account of the rise of behavioralism. See also Sheldon Wolin, “Political Theory as a Vocation,” American Political Science Review 63:4 (1969): 1062–1082 for an analysis of how the commitment to method threatens the capacity for discriminative judgment. 25 See Richard Ashcraft, “Political Theory and the Problem of Ideology,” The Journal of Politics, 42:3 (1980): 687–705. 26 Freire, Politics of Education, 1985, p. 12.

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Freire, “the so-called neutrality of science is nothing more than a necessary myth of the ruling classes.”27 A politically relevant teaching practice and research project, according to Freire, would fuse a critique of power with a hopeful vision for social and political change. It would foreground the question of whose interests are served via what is taking place in the classroom and appearing in print.28 These conclusions were the result of Freire’s analysis of the interconnections between pedagogy and politics. He observed the role education played perpetuating the domination of impoverished populations. Even today, the classroom continues to be used as a weapon against the poor to keep them in their place (e.g. via high-tech surveillance in schools; permanent police presence; policy of “zero tolerance”) and to disseminate ideological narratives (parading as objective) about why some people are poor and others are rich (e.g. the American dream).29 However, the classroom can also be a space to fight against the past and present legacies of colonialism, rule by the few, and for thoughtful political transformation. Because of this unconventional and provocative position, many doubted, as Freire claimed, “whether or not I am an educator.”30 This reservation about Freire being an educator was itself a political move. All education/research is inescapably political because of the way problems are framed, the questions that are asked and whose research is included and excluded from the discussion.31

27 Freire, Politics of Education, 1985, p. 157. 28 See Bertell Ollman, “What Is Political Science? What Should It Be?” New Political Science,

22:4 (2000): 553–562 for a discussion of these and related issues. 29 See the New York Times bestseller by Richard J. Herrnstein and Charles Murray. They argue that “success and failure in the American economy are increasingly a matter of the genes that people inherit” in The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life (New York, NY: The Free Press, 1996), p. 91. On the back cover, Milton Friedman states The Bell Curve is “brilliant, original, and objective.” For an alternative perspective, see Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis, Schooling in Capitalist America: Educational Reform and the Contradictions of Economic Life (New York, NY: Basic Books, 1976). See Jonathan Kozol, Savage Inequalities: Children in America’s Schools (New York: Crown, 1991). See, finally, Christopher G. Robbins, Expelling Hope: The Assault on Youth and the Militarization of Schooling (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2008). 30 Freire, Pedagogy of Hope, 2009, p. 1. 31 For an account of the complicity of the medical establishment with racial dictatorship,

see Harriet A. Washington, Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present (New York, NY: Doubleday, 2006).

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The acknowledgment of the political significance of research, teaching and education does not mean that all positions are opinions and that no one is right or wrong about anything.32 Some arguments are qualitatively better than other arguments even if all arguments ultimately lack an absolute basis. Freire’s rejection of neutrality simply means facing up to the fact that everything that takes place within educational institutions has political implications, that knowledge is situated in a historical context, and that no decision is ever made in a sphere untouched by power.33 Freire wants educators and scholars to embrace “epistemological distance” as a check on “aggressive rationalism” where a methodological fixation on trees risks blinding one to the larger forest of power.34 Freire’s rejection of positivism as the ideology of the reigning elite should not be construed as a rejection of rigorous academic work. Freire is not stuck in a simplistic binary. Freire explains: “My position is to be in sympathy with both commonsense and a rigorous academic approach.”35 Freire’s true educator, that is, one committed to creating a society that allows all humans to flourish, would not indoctrinate students to follow a particular party line. As Freire puts it, “no one can unveil the world for another.”36 By avowing the political character of educational institutions as a force for progressive social and political change, and simultaneously rejecting the imposition of a counter-hegemonic dogma on the minds of students, Freire constructs a hopeful vision for political change based on a critical theory of power and a utopian disposition. Freire thus engages in a meta-political project in the Kantian sense of working out the conditions of possibility for the emergence of radical political subjectivity that avoids the Leninist dictum of self-appointed elite that leads the people to nirvana. For Freire, the decisions educators make (or simply accept and practice out of habit and professional norms) must be brought out into the open. Freire thus backs educators into a political-existential corner where they are 32 See John Stuart Mill for a discussion of uninformed versus informed discussion in On Liberty and Other Writings, ed. Stefan Collini (New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2005). 33 See Michel Foucault, Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings, ed. and trans. Colin Gordon (New York: Random House, 1988). 34 Freire, Pedagogy of Indignation, 2004, p. 5. 35 Freire and Antonio Faundez, Learning to Question: A Pedagogy of Liberation (Geneva,

Switzerland: WCC Publications, 1989), p. 48. 36 Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, 2010, p. 169.

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required to be more explicit about the political implications of classroom practices (e.g. how one teaches), the political implications of the content of what is taught (e.g. what one teaches) and the core assumptions and political implications of a particular research project (e.g. vision for political change). It is hard to imagine, for example, that students are being educated as democratic citizens in classes organized by lectures where teachers deposit knowledge into the heads of students who sit there passive and silent. Students cannot be liberated with the “instruments of domestication.”37 Freire thus undermines the model of the charismatic instructor who transmits knowledge to students via dynamic lectures. He puts into question the authority, hierarchy and knowledge nexus I have criticized throughout this book. It is also hard to imagine that students will understand anything significant about American democracy by memorizing the functions of political institutions and sidestepping how capitalism limits, if not negates, rule by the people.38 It is also hard to imagine that objective research is taking place when the scholars conducting the research assume that inequality is inevitable, rule by the enlightened few is wise and that the masses are destined to be ignorant and impoverished.39 As Freire states, “it is naïve to expect the dominant classes to develop a type of education that would enable subordinate classes to perceive social injustices critically.”40 Finally, it is hard to imagine that a scholar is serving a valuable role as a member in a democratic society and as an educator when they say “it’s not the job of the scholars conducting the work to explain it.”41

37 Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, 2010, p. 65. 38 I was Chair of the U.S. Government “Textbook Committee.” During the 2011–2012

and 2012–2013 academic years, I reviewed textbooks for introductory American government courses. Not a single book I reviewed had a sustained analysis of the relationship between capitalism and the political state and the overwhelming influence played by corporate money subverting democracy. 39 As I indicated in Chapter 2, Leo Strauss provided the political philosophical rationale for these positions. See also Herrnstein and Murray’s The Bell Curve for a justification for the status quo masked as objective research. For Ian Shapiro, “hierarchical relations are often legitimate and when they are, they do not involve domination on my account,” in Shapiro, The State of Democratic Theory (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2003), p. 4. 40 Freire, The Politics of Education, 1985, p. 102. 41 See “An Interview with Lynn Vavreck,” PS: Political Science and Politics, Supplement

(2015): 43.

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For Freire, there is no escape from the educational-existential decision. Either one sides with the political status quo (even if by default) or one positions oneself in the classroom as a force for social and political transformation. Freire thus viewed education as a vehicle for the recuperation of the humanity of the oppressed and for the thoughtful transformation of society. This simply means we need to live up to our ideals about equality and democracy. If educators condition students to adapt and integrate themselves to the status quo, Freire argues that they are instruments of domination for the ruling class. What matters is how educational institutions position students as political subjects. Freire is explicit about this: “The important thing is to place men in conscious confrontation with their problems, to make them agents of their own recuperation.”42 As the reader may have guessed, Freire becomes a political target. His ideas, as he puts it, “do not benefit the interests of the dominant class.”43 It would be a mistake, however, to reduce Freire’s political position to a sort of reverse indoctrination, where the ideas the educator identifies are simply pounded into the brains of students. Freire states: “Treating schools as non-neutral spaces does not mean turning them into a political base for the party in power.”44 Freire claims “what is impermissible is for teachers to impose on their pupils their own ‘reading of the world.’”45 For Freire, the Right and Left are in some ways the same insofar as their dogmatism leads them to use schools as propaganda sites for the political indoctrination of young people. Education was not about the transmission of knowledge but was a practice of self-awakening via dialogic practice. Freire puts into question the authority, hierarchy and knowledge nexus. The Right imposes and generalizes a dictatorship of the marketplace and eliminates from students the capacity to dream of an alternative to authoritarian neoliberalism.46 The Left’s mistake, as Freire puts it, “has always been their absolute conviction of their certainties, which makes them sec42 Freire, Education for Critical Consciousness (New York: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2013), p. 13. 43 Freire, Politics of Education, 1985, p. 180. 44 Freire, Teachers as Cultural Workers: Letters to Those Who Dare Teach, trans. Macedo et al.

(Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2005), p. 17. 45 Freire, Pedagogy of Hope, 2009, p. 96. 46 I define neoliberalism as a strategy for the upward transfer of wealth (e.g. from working

people to the rich) via regressive taxation, privatization and financialization. See David Harvey, A Brief History of Neoliberalism (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007).

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tarian, authoritarian, and religious.”47 For Freire, Marxists need to get over their “smug certainty.”48 Freire thus rejects all party lines and attempts to make the political significance of education explicit through an egalitariandialogic approach to teaching that recuperates the humanity of students. This requires something deeper than merely inverting hierarchy and imposing a model for correct thinking onto students. Rather, it starts by rejecting the discourse of neutrality and positivism as ideologies of the ruling class. It also starts by rejecting the fundamentalism of the Right and Left and the “arrogance of administrators.”49 Finally, it requires having faith in the people irrespective of their social class and previous conditions of physical and mental servitude. “Trusting the people,” Freire proclaims, “is the indispensable precondition for revolutionary change.”50

Illiteracy Reading and writing are not neutral activities but connected to power relations, access to quality education, free time (the word school comes from the Latin word for leisure) and political struggle.51 Freire’s interest in adult literacy grew out of his experience working with rural farm workers and urban slum dwellers in South America. Literacy was a political issue not in some broad existential-philosophical sense but because literacy was a requirement for voting in Brazil as outlined in the 1891 Brazilian Constitution. Like all literacy tests, it was designed to be failed.52 Hence, illiteracy is a political and structural problem. The poor are prevented from reading and naming the world. Other groups perpetuate privilege from one gen-

47 Freire, Teachers as Cultural Workers, 2005, p. 26. 48 Freire, Pedagogy of Hope, 2009, p. 82. 49 Freire, Teachers as Cultural Workers, 2005, p. 66. 50 Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, 2010, p. 60. 51 Even though he had a narrow view on who qualified as the people, political education was a major concern for Thomas Jefferson. For an insightful commentary on this, see Michael Hardt Presents Thomas Jefferson (New York, NY: Verso, 2007). 52 For literacy and other restrictions on voting in the U.S. see Frances Fox Piven and Richard Cloward, Why Americans Still Don’t Vote and Why Politicians Want It That Way (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 2000). For Piven and Cloward, “the United States is the only major democratic nation in which the less-well-off, as well as the young and minorities, are substantially underrepresented in the electorate” (p. 3).

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eration to the next via wealth, access to education and political power. In this sense, illiteracy is constructed, engineered and a political issue.53 In “Literacy and Destitution,” Freire continues these themes and argues that literacy is not just about reading and writing (e.g. learning one’s ABC’s), but is a broader political issue that is connected to struggles for social and political transformation.54 Freire’s concept of literacy as something broader than a minimal capacity to grasp abstract symbols and rhythmically sing the sounds of consonants to include a basic understanding of politics, meaning political literacy, is particularly relevant to the U.S. and other industrial societies. Consider, for example, that millions of people in advanced industrialized democracies have their attention directed to a variety of spectacles (e.g. sporting and media events) and seem to be swimming in oceans of information via talk radio, tweets and headline news.55 These technologistas might crash into you because they are texting while driving. They might impede your forward movement and bump into you on the street and airport because they walk with their heads permanently tilted downward as they scroll through information on a handheld device. These techies also blog, text, tweet on “Twitter,” post “selfies” and “usies” on “Facebook,” send videos on “Snapchat,” count their followers on “Instagram” and chase Pokéman. It would be a mistake, though, to define communication and literacy as the quantity of information transferred and absorbed.56 In the face of this glut of information, an uninformed electorate paralyzed by the strange combination of profound ignorance and self-satisfied arrogance stare political scientists in the face.57 Freire’s work

53 For the relationship between literacy and political struggle, see William W. Sokoloff, “Frederick Douglass and the Politics of Rage,” New Political Science: A Journal of Politics and Culture 36 (2014). 54 See Chapter 5 in Freire, Pedagogy of Indignation, 2004. 55 See Murray Edelman, Constructing the Political Spectacle (Chicago, IL: University of

Chicago Press, 1988). 56 See Jodi Dean, Democracy and Other Neoliberal Fantasies: Communicative Capitalism

and Left Politics (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2009). 57 See Martin Gilens, “Political Ignorance and Collective Policy Preferences,” American Political Science Review 95:2 (2001): 379–396. See also Brendan Nyhan and Jason Reifler, “When Corrections Fail: The Persistence of Political Misperceptions,” Political Behavior 32 (2010): 303–330. Discontent led to the creation of PS: Political Science and Politics in 1968 to address issues pertaining to research, teaching and professional development. The Journal of Political Science Education “especially invites articles that provided systematic tests and empirical evidence to demonstrate that the pedagogical innovations or innovative teaching

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on literacy is important for understanding the broader social and political forces that have produced this strange form of oligarchic corporate democracy with uninformed/misinformed, somewhat cynical and self-satisfied citizens.58 The political significance of sleep walking technologistas is troubling because they are vulnerable to misinformation, propaganda and the inflammatory rhetoric of demagogue-entertainers who promise them freedom via debt, peace through war, identity by way of walls and self-determination via tyranny. Contra conceptions of literacy construed as the minimal knowledge needed to read and write, Freire’s concept of literacy is political because it reclaims language from abstract, static and reified formulations. He situates words in contexts that illuminate broader power relationships. For Freire, “problems of language always involve ideological questions and, along with them, questions of power.”59 Words, for Freire, are not neutral but weapons in charged political contexts that are connected to the social control of marginalized populations.60 Since illiteracy is a structural problem, the project of literacy must put an end to the structures that generated the problem. For Freire, “illiteracy is one of the concrete expressions of an unjust social reality.”61 Hence, literacy and political agency work together. For Freire, literacy is a route to the “invention of citizenship.”62 The teaching style and specific examples used in the classroom must confront the structures of power that shape the life chances and intellectual horizons of impoverished people. Not hide these power relationships behind myths about unlimited opportunity, the slow but inevitable spread of democracy, the growing inclusion of under-represented groups in the political process, minimal civilian casualties in war as a result of “smart bombs” and the U.S. as the greatest peace loving country in the history of the world.63

techniques described in the article actually work”; see “Aims & Scope,” Journal of Political Science Education. This statement arguably excludes the pedagogical-political research Freire conducted on teaching and learning. 58 Hannah Arendt diagnosed how totalitarian regimes create widespread cynicism to perpetuate their rule in Origins of Totalitarianism (New York, NY: Harcourt, 1968). 59 Freire, Teachers as Cultural Workers, 2005, p. 132. 60 See Robbins, Expelling Hope: The Assault on Youth and the Militarization of Schooling,

2008. 61 Freire, Politics of Education, 1985, p. 10. 62 Freire, Pedagogy of Hope, 2009, p. 30. 63 For some of these and related themes, see Carl Boggs, Imperial Delusions: American Militarism and Endless War (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2005).

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Fundamental Inversion The type of critical pedagogy formulated by Freire required something akin to a fundamental inversion in the way educators and students conceptualized the learning process. That is to say, a new definition was needed for “student success.”64 The questions Freire asks are not whether our measurements and rubrics are accurate, not whether students are being adequately prepared for the workplace, not whether there are enough writing assignments, not whether the latest “best practices” are employed and not whether tests are being used to maximize learning.65 Rather, Freire foregrounds who the students are in terms of their lived experience, socioeconomic class and access to political power. This is pertinent because teaching involves relating to particular individuals. As Stanley Aronowitz aptly puts it, Freire helps students “achieve a grasp of the concrete conditions of their daily lives.”66 For Freire, “the educator must begin with the educands’ ‘here’ and not with her or his own.”67 One must, Freire asserts, “get close to the language and syntax of the audience.”68 For Freire, there is a “need for educators to soak up as it were the culture of the popular masses.”69 This knowledge allows the educator to form an intersubjective connection with students so a new type of learning could take place.70 This new type of learning must help students gain a political understanding of their daily lives. For the majority of people on the planet, everyday life is punctuated by exploitation, starvation, exclusion and domination enforced through the internalization of codes dictating docility and deference and ultimately backed up with violence. For Freire, anything that 64 Student success is usually defined as retention and graduation rates. 65 For these questions, see Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa, Academically Adrift: Limited

Learning on College Campuses (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2011). For a critique of the discourse and ideology of “best practices”, see Wendy Brown, Undoing the Demos: Neoliberalism’s Stealth Revolution, 2015. For Brown, “best practices are intended to displace and replace politics” with “value free technical knowledge” (p. 139). 66 Stanley Aronowitz, Against Orthodoxy: Social Theory and Its Discontents (New York, NY: Palgrave MacMillan, 2015), p. 114. 67 Freire, Pedagogy of Hope, 2009, p. 47. 68 Freire, Pedagogy of Hope, 2009, p. 16. 69 Freire and Faundez, Learning to Question, 1989, p. 94. 70 For Raschke, “the scholarly community is very often terrified of letting its own discourse

community be challenged by popular styles of communication.” See The Digital Revolution and the Coming of the Postmodern University, 2003, p. 73.

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prevents people from acquiring a political understanding of their daily lives and lived experience is an oppressive mystification, an ideological tactic of domination and the devaluation of their humanity. In contrast to vocational pedagogical approaches based on teaching students skills and training so they can adapt to and find a place within the political and economic status quo, critical pedagogy helps students forge connections between their lives and broader economic context for the purpose of the thoughtful transformation of society. Students are thereby given and simultaneously give themselves the capacity to “intervene in their context.”71 Critical pedagogy boils down to the self-acquisition of political consciousness and to what Freire calls conscientização, which Freire defines as the “awakening of critical awareness.”72 The failure to know one’s students in terms of their intellectual mindset and socio-economic location in society would thus make it impossible to teach in any meaningful sense of the term: “Unless educators expose themselves to the popular culture across the board,” Freire asserts, “their discourse will hardly be heard by anyone but themselves.”73 Learning about the daily lives of students is the first step to Freire’s political understanding of teaching. The reinvention of power in the classroom via the dialogic encounter and problem-posing pedagogical practice is the second step. This sets the stage for the emergence of collective solidarity and a newly acquired political consciousness.74 For Freire, “dialogue in any situation demands the problematic confrontation of that very knowledge in its unquestionable relationship with the concrete reality in which it is engendered and on which it acts in order to better understand, explain, and transform that reality.”75 Freire’s theory of dialogue rejects the view that the teacher talks and “teaches” and the student listens and “learns.” For Freire, this view objectifies students and renders dialogue impossible. Freire also rejects a Socratic dialogic-intellectual approach not because Socrates restricted himself to interrogating Athenian elites (cf. Plato’s “Apology”), nor because Socrates concluded his dialogic encounters by saying that he “knows nothing” which 71 Freire, Education for Critical Consciousness, 2013, p. 45. 72 Freire, Education for Critical Consciousness, 2013, p. 15. 73 Freire, Pedagogy of Hope, 2009, p. 91. 74 For Freire, “nobody is superior to anyone else”; Pedagogy of Freedom, 1998, p. 108. 75 Freire, Education for Critical Consciousness, 2013, p. 108.

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renders Socrates unteachable at a certain level, but because Socratic intellectualism avoided the “man-world relationship.”76 That is, Socrates failed to illuminate how one’s place in the world impacts and constricts one’s intellectual horizons.77 In contrast to Socratic a-contextual intellectualism, Freire prefers “reciprocal learning between teachers and students” that puts into question the legitimacy of the social and political status quo.78 This requires a dialogic practice based on the mutual analysis of the contexts in which teachers and students live. Via dialogic praxis, students become “agents of their own recuperation.”79 To prevent dialogue from becoming a ruse of power, dialogue for Freire is not about speaking “to” someone (e.g. a hierarchal and vertical relationship) but “with” another person (e.g. a horizontal encounter that engenders solidarity).80 Philia provided the necessary intersubjective bridge between teacher and student that enables mutual learning: “It is not possible to be a teacher without loving one’s students.”81

Pedagogy and Revolt Freire’s pedagogy of revolt requires dialogue, a critique of power, the constitution of radical agency and conceptualizes revolution as a recurring event. Freirean dialogue is a key component of the reinvention of power as a non-reactionary force because it keeps a space open for listening, learning and communion with the oppressed. The reinvention of power also plays itself out in the transformation of the self-identity of educational practitioners. For Friere, to be a teacher requires a metaphorical martyrdom, the “death of the teacher,” as it were: “The educator for freedom has to die as the exclusive educator of learners.”82 The “death of the teacher” emerges 76 Freire, The Politics of Education, 1985, p. 55. Plato’s Meno is an exception to this claim because Socrates and a slave engage in a dialogue. Plato, Meno, trans. G. M. A. Grube (Indianapolis: Hackett Press, 1980). 77 For a defense of Socratic citizenship that avoids an analysis of the material conditions of everyday life, see Dana Villa, Socratic Citizenship (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001). 78 Freire, Pedagogy of Freedom, 1998, p. 67. 79 Freire, Education for Critical Consciousness, 2013, p. 13. 80 Freire, Pedagogy of Hope, 2009, p. 19. 81 Freire, Teachers as Cultural Workers, 2005, p. 28. 82 Freire, The Politics of Education, 1985, p. 105.

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as the precondition for the birth of empowered democratic citizens. Freire thus performs the deconstruction of educational institutions via teaching practices that open a new horizon for the emancipatory project. What are the steps needed to make this happen? First, the social relations of domination in educational institutions that mirror broader relations of domination have to be undermined. Much like Michel Foucault’s genealogical analysis of how punishment renders the body docile in Discipline and Punish, Freire was similarly interested in the ways that students are “positioned” and become objects of power when they enter the classroom.83 Located ambiguously between the family and the workplace, educational institutions attempt to contain social problems, defer entry into glutted labor markets and shape students to fit into preordained occupational roles. Through a protracted conditioning process, students learn that they are required to be silent when the teacher enters. For most of the day, students sit while the instructor stands. The classroom space is hierarchical with an invisible yet concrete wall between students and teacher that mirrors and reinforces the hierarchical character of churches, the workplace, the courtroom, soccer teams, the cheerleading squad and just about every aspect of life in a hierarchal society. The classroom spatially organizes bodies via strict rules of placement, posture, hygiene, attire and consciousness.84 All of this is somehow intended to constitute “readiness for learning,” which resembles a strange immobilizing and infantilizing form of domination. Just like workers, students are individualized and constituted as a mass via specific classroom practices. Teachers discipline students through public humiliation, expulsion, evaluation according to “objective” criteria, surveillance, classification, constant comparison, and referring students to the appropriate disciplinary authorities (e.g. medical, psychological) when necessary. Workers face termination and starvation if they violate the norms of docility in the workplace. In classrooms, students enter a field where they are accountable for their performance of unspoken educational rituals including hygiene, punctuality, memorization, orderly classroom conduct, following instructions, adherence to deadlines and evaluation. The evaluation of students, for Freire, has nothing to do with education. It is about 83 See Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, trans. Sheridan (New York: Vintage Books, 1995). 84 See Roger Deacon, “Michel Foucault on Education: A Preliminary Theoretical Overview,” South African Journal of Education 26 (2006): 177–187.

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“punishment.”85 Once the social relations of domination in educational institutions are illuminated, course content acquires a new level of significance. That is to say, the classroom must be shattered as a space of social control and transformed into a space where social and political contradictions are ventilated and subjected to critical and radical analysis. It is thus necessary to disrupt the authority, hierarchy and knowledge nexus. For Freire, the learning process is not a disembodied pursuit of “facts” but a visceral experience: “I have a right to be angry and to express that anger,” he proclaims.86 Given the legacy of colonial domination outlined by Eduardo Galeano in Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent, education should be profoundly disturbing and upsetting.87 This is precisely what Freire injects into the curriculum via critical pedagogy. In this sense, critical pedagogy gnaws at the foundations of oppressive political orders, “like a pack of rats,” and positions students in a manner to hasten their collapse.88 Education is thus an enactment and rehearsal of revolution.89 For Freire, the classroom is a space of struggle and revolt. It is a location where students reclaim their humanity via a critical understanding of their place in the world. The teacher had to occupy an ever-shifting location to accomplish this, though. As Freire puts it, the teacher is both inside and outside the system: “I have been trying to think and teach by keeping one foot inside the system and the other foot outside.”90 In addition to his commitment to dialogue and the metaphorical “death of the teacher,” this inside–outside position flags Freire’s attempt to reinvent power. In contrast to hegemonic sovereign power that insulates itself and hovers above its objects, this new mode of Freirean power is one that “does not fear to be called into question and does not become rigid for the sake of defending the freedom already achieved.”91 If there is going to be a rev-

85 Freire, Teachers as Cultural Workers, 2005, p. 13. 86 Freire, Pedagogy of Indignation, 2004, p. 58. 87 Eduardo Galeano, Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent, trans. Belfrage (New York, NY: Monthly Review Press, 1997). 88 Fanon, Wretched of the Earth, trans. Philcox (New York, NY: Grove Press, 2004), p. 81. 89 See Augusto Boal, Theatre of the Oppressed, trans. McBride and McBride (New York, NY:

Theatre Communications Group, 1985). 90 Freire, The Politics of Education, 1985, p. 178. 91 Freire, Learning to Question, 1989, p. 62.

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olution worthy of the name, Freire insists, it must be one that is a “continuous event.”92 Taking power via a spectacular overthrow of an oppressive regime reflects a superficial understanding of the problem of oppression and yearning for popular rule. For Freire, the challenge was to “reinvent power.”93 The starting place for this was in the classroom via a protracted pedagogical-political experiment in self-rule, dialogue and thoughtful revolution conceptualized and practiced as a continuous event. The type of democracy Freire had in mind would not represent constituents. It would resist institutional form and permanently disrupt the tendency to oligarchy. Democracy, for Freire, is not a form but the perpetual enactment of a people’s revolt against centralized power in the classroom and outside of it in the polity. For Freire, “I prefer rebelliousness because it affirms my status as a person who has never given into the manipulations and strategies designed to reduce the human person to nothing.”94 It is through rebellion, Freire asserts, that we can “affirm ourselves.”95 Rebellion must go further and become revolution as a continuous event. This is grounded in collective agency and the formation of a political identity. Freire states: “Without a sense of identity there is no need for struggle. I will only fight you if I am very sure of myself.”96 Freire continues: “At no time can there be a struggle for liberation and self-affirmation without the formation of an identity, and identity of an individual, the group, the social class.”97 Consider, for example, the following Arizona law that maps with brutal clarity the connection between politics and the political challenge posed by emergent political identity, as well as the significance of Freire’s argument. Arizona’s 2010 House Bill 2281 eliminated ethnic studies programs and indicates that the state has an interest in the proper (meaning political) socialization of young people and in restricting the meaning of politics and collective struggle so that it corresponds with official non-threatening definitions and understandings. To be more specific, House Bill 2281 explicitly

92 Freire, Cultural Action for Freedom, p. 64. See also Leon Trotsky, The Permanent Revolution, ed. Jonson (New York, NY: Create Space Independent Publishing Platform, 2014). 93 Freire, Politics of Education, 1985, p. 179. 94 Freire, Pedagogy of Freedom, 1998, p. 103. 95 Freire, Pedagogy of Indignation, 2004, p. 61. 96 Freire, The Politics of Education, 1985, p. 186. 97 Freire, The Politics of Education, 1985, p. 102.

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forbids “ethnic solidarity” and promotes “treatment of pupils as individuals.”98 It thus eliminates ethnic studies programs and imposes the adoption of an American individualistic identity premised on the negation of a historical understanding of the treatment of the conquered Mexican population and theft of Mexican territory.99 Bill 2281 signifies a fear of ethnic/racial activism emerging in the U.S. and the belief that this can be contained through curriculum control.100 Although House Bill 2281 targets Latin@ students, the logic of it fits other ethnic/racial categories perceived as a threat to current distributions of power. As racial unrest in response to persistent police brutality continues to simmer in the U.S., the question seems to be how effective this form of curriculum control will be for the pacification of people of color over the long term. In contrast to the type of teacher and student this House Bill tries to create, Freire puts forward a vision of a new type of critical intellectual. Someone who is not naïve about power. Someone that still has hope. Someone who is able to explain why research is relevant to the lives of people. Someone who is dedicated to social and political transformation inside and outside of the classroom. Freire thus keeps history open to novelty and invention and he rejects nostalgia that “nullifies tomorrow.”101 For both the Left and Right lured to sleep in the “end of history” thesis, political struggle is unnecessary, impossible and pointless. In contrast, Freire creatively appropriated the intellectual resources at his disposal and forged something new. He fused a mixture of Marxist humanism, postcolonial theory and existentialism with the lessons he learned from working with illiterate farm workers and slum dwellers in South America. He stands before us as a utopian political theorist committed to the fight for thoughtful revolutionary change. I would bet that if you asked a random political scientist at the APSA annual meeting if they read Freire’s work on the political significance of pedagogy and practiced it, you would observe a blank stare.

98 See House Bill 2281, state of Arizona, 2010. 99 For the linkage between individualism, neoliberalism and “Americanism”, see Milton

Friedman, Capitalism and Freedom (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002). 100 See also Clyde W. Barrow, “The Coming of the Corporate-Fascist University?” New Political Science 36:4 (2014): 640–646. 101 Freire, Pedagogy of the Heart, 2007, p. 45.

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Conclusion Does the fact that Freire wrote for a Third World context limit the applicability of his ideas to other contexts? The answer is no. Freire states “any ideas coming from another part of the world cannot be simply transplanted.”102 However, Freire also claims “there is a universal dimension to what I have been writing about education.”103 Is it not the case, though, that Freire’s work operates according to a simplistic either/or and us/them understanding of the world and it might not always be as clear-cut as Freire seems to think? Perhaps the “banking model” of education is not always oppressive. Perhaps dialogue in the classroom is not always desirable and possible at every moment. Freire’s typology between liberating and oppressive education is nonetheless helpful for making basic distinctions, especially for new educators that may not realize that the rhetoric of learning cloaked over institutions of higher education conceals the fact that educational institutions are big businesses, have ideological agendas and that teaching practices have political implications.104 When President Obama claimed that it is not a student’s “color” or the “income of their parents” that is the most important factor determining their success in “A Blueprint for Reform” but “the teacher standing at the front of the classroom” Obama seems to be embracing a Freirean position. He is not. Obama has a narrow historical sensibility and he is setting teachers up for failure.105 Obama not only makes teachers responsible for overcoming the legacies of racism and economic inequality but he also denies the power of past oppression (not to mention current forms) on the present and future. In addition to calling for a new type of educator, the work of Freire brings the legacies of past and current oppression into the

102 Freire, Cultural Action for Freedom, 2000, p. 10. 103 Freire, The Politics of Education, 1985, p. 190. 104 See Gaye Tuchman, Wannabe U: Inside the Corporate University (Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, 2009). See also Henry Giroux, Neoliberalism’s War on Higher Education (Chicago, IL: Haymarket Books, 2014). 105 See Obama’s statement in U.S. Department of Education, “A Blueprint for Reform: The Reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act,” March 2010. In the section of the report subtitled “Homeless Children and Youths Education,” the blueprint states that “systems and services” will be put in place to “meet the educational needs of homeless students” (p. 21). It is hard to understand the logic behind this formulation. How will “systems and services” that address the educational needs of homeless students and ignore homelessness meet the needs of these students?

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lesson plan. The life contexts of students become the text. Dialogue is the method. Democratic non-reactionary power is the practice. Self-liberation is the goal. Facilitated by the ultimate disappearing act of the teacher as the authoritative dispenser of knowledge. All of this geared to the broadest possible humanization of society. Freire’s work thus expands the dialogue about the types of pedagogy needed to build and sustain a democracy, and the type of academic and professional institutions that need to be in place to sustain this project over the long term. At the end of the day, though, Freire’s work requires political scientists to look into the existential mirror and ask, “What and who do I serve?”

CHAPTER 8

Conclusion: Silence, Voice and Political Resistance in the Classroom

Abstract In this concluding chapter, I argue that the best way to cultivate the voice of quiet and silent students is through critical intersectionality and every day utopianism in the classroom. A culturally relevant curriculum, critical autobiography, inclusion of feminist perspectives and visceral learning constitute the form of critical intersectionality I promote. This critical intersectional approach is simultaneously pedagogical and political. It cultivates voice in groups poorly served by educational institutions and opens utopian horizons of social and political transformation. This chapter thus bridges the theoretical with the practical and shows how to practice radical political theory pedagogy as the practice of equality.

Speech and voice are fundamental aspects of the human condition. Communicating with others is how we tell our story, how we express pain, how we create bridges and build community, how we overcome fear, how we sing and celebrate and how we scream against injustice. If you are unhappy, speak up. Persuade others to take action. Voice is a way to combat invisibility and names the utopian hope in the possibility of meaningful political change. The U.S. Constitution protects freedom of speech as a formal right because the founders believed it was an essential component in a political regime. Historically, though, countless rules and practices nulli-

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fied the voices of certain classes of people. Blacks could not testify.1 Women could not vote. Indigenous people were not U.S. citizens. Nevertheless, productive engagement in politics is unlikely if not impossible unless individuals are able to exercise voice and coherently articulate their interests and viewpoints. Hence, helping marginalized groups find and refine their voice is a central component of the emancipatory project and consistent with the U.S. Constitution’s valorization of free speech. Helping marginalized groups find their voice is also an essential component of grassroots’ political struggle.2 Cultivating voice both in oneself and for others, however, is an incredibly difficult pedagogical task. No one can speak for someone else. Building coalitions capable of contesting and transforming hegemonic forms of political power nevertheless hinges on creating spaces for the voices of historically marginalized, silenced and oppressed groups. To claim that voice is not enough and that politics is about policy outcomes and takes place in formally designated political institutions obscures the ways that building voice, especially among marginalized groups, is a subversive act and can set broader political forces into motion beyond the horizon a politics of liberal incrementalism. Even though it might be difficult to measure, micro-level political practices signaled in building voice can provide the necessary bridge to broader macro-level political practices that can more effectively contest structural injustice, cruelty and violence.3 Without voice, emancipation and political empowerment are impossible. Building voice is also a crucial component of counter-hegemonic utopian pedagogy and a major theme of this book because it produces alternative forms of subjectivity that can challenge the terms and conditions of the political status quo and disrupt the authority, hierarchy and knowledge nexus.4 Educators play an essential role in helping individuals acquire and refine their voices and develop a strong sense of identity. I have noticed that some of the Latina students in my lower- and upper-division political 1 See Amanda Carlin, “The Courtroom as White Space: Racial Performance as Noncredibility,” UCLA Law Review 450 (2016). 2 By voice, I am referring to the capacity for critical self-reflection and articulation that grows out of self but also reaches out to others. 3 I address the macro aspects of political struggle in my book Confrontational Citizenship, 2017. 4 In the prison visit chapter, the voice of students was a central component. In the chapter on online learning, the voice of students was also a primary concern.

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science courses are what we might call quiet and silent (or silenced) students, meaning that they do not talk, or at least they stop talking when I enter the classroom.5 As Ange-Marie Hancock puts it, Latinas have been “socialized into voicelessness.”6 One of my students told me that her parents have told her for years that “you are prettier when you are quiet.” One of my Latino students shared with me that a teacher told him to “get the tortilla out of your mouth” when he spoke. On a broader level, the voices of women are not credible and routinely ignored, as Professor Christine Blasey Ford discovered during U.S. Senate judiciary hearings. When it comes to voice, “women of color are at the bottom of the credibility hierarchy.”7 In the classroom, some of my students might not say a single word for the entire semester and some are visibly uncomfortable when they speak and when asked to speak. Given this fact, an adversarial hyper-masculine Socratic approach to teaching characterized by verbal jousting and confrontational and aggressive questioning would be counter-productive. Approaching the question of voice from an exclusively Marxist and social-class perspective would address the impact economic exploitation has on the lives of silent students but it would miss the ways in which interlocking forms of oppression work together to deny Latinas voice (e.g. patriarchy; poverty; racism; machista culture).8 In what follows, I approach the question of Latina silence and voice from a critical intersectional perspective, one that views pedagogy as part of a larger utopian project of emancipation and political

5 For the narratives that frame students, see Michelle Fine, Framing Dropouts: Notes on the Politics of an Urban Public High School (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1991), p. 61. Ange-Marie Hancock states that Latinas are taught “obedience to the church, submission to men and limited participation in public discourse”; Hancock, Solidarity Politics for Millennials: A Guide to Ending the Oppression Olympics (New York: Palgrave, 2011), p. 153. 6 See Pizarro, Chicanas and Chicanos in School, 2005, p. 259. 7 Carlin, 2016, p. 476. 8 I acknowledge the wide range of diversity that the term “Latina” obscures. For the difficulties involved with Latino identity, see Cristina Beltrán, The Trouble with Unity: Latino Politics and the Creation of Identity (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010).

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empowerment.9 The classroom is a utopian space for building community.10 This happens via joy, humor and experimentation. This chapter is personal and political. It grew out of a variety of experiences. Several years ago, I attended a panel at APSA where women of color reflected on their experiences in the discipline of political science pertaining to tenure and promotion, teaching and service. I went to this panel because I was tired of hearing debates and discussions about topics that did not seem to matter and that struck me as far removed from actual political struggles taking place today. Without going into the details, I was appalled at what I learned about the politics of the discipline and how unwelcoming it is to people of color, women and individuals from working-class backgrounds. As I listened, I also recalled many instances of elitist arrogance and cruelty in the intellectual changes I witnessed at academic conferences. I recalled the treatment of graduate students in the department where I earned my Ph.D. I also recall many instances of the poor treatment of junior faculty where I currently teach. These learning experiences, as well as many other ones, have compelled me to write this chapter on voice. Every instructor has had to grapple at one time or another with the sea of blank faces in the classroom as well as students’ silence, especially in state mandated political science courses where students must take the course to fulfill a graduation requirement. Ignoring this silence and simply lecturing, a form of teaching based on monologue, is something that I refuse to do. When I ask students to speak about course material, though, oftentimes they do not have much to say, or at least that is my impression. Nonetheless, I have struggled to understand classroom silence. I have tried to come up with ways to stimulate more dialogue and conversation in the classroom through (1) speaking with colleagues and asking them what they do to stimulate discussion, (2) speaking with students about student silence, (3) attending teaching workshops, (4) experimentation, and

9 See Collins and Bilge, Intersectionality, 2016. See Ange-Marie Hancock, Intersectionality:

An Intellectual History (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016). See also New Political Science: A Journal of Politics & Culture, Special Issue: Intersectionality for the Global Age (December 2015). See, finally, Amy Cabrera Rasmussen, “Toward an Intersectional Political Science Pedagogy,” Journal of Political Science Education 10 (2014): 102–116. 10 See Gustavo E. Fischman and Peter McLaren, “Schooling for Democracy: Toward a Critical Utopianism,” Contemporary Sociology 29 (January 2000): 168–179. See also Darren Webb, “Where’s the Vision? The Concept of Utopia in Contemporary Educational Theory,” Oxford Review of Education 35 (December 2009): 743–760.

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(5) reading scholarly literature on silence in the classroom.11 The question on my mind is the following. What are the best ways to reach and help quiet and silent students (in particular, women of color) find/refine their voices, speak with confidence, acquire a strong sense of personal identity, make connections between their lived experiences and the broader political and economic context and come to see themselves as political agents? Given current hysteria about an endless invasion of unassimilable and possibly criminal Mexican and Central Americans streaming northward in caravans, the pedagogical project pertaining to Latina voice outlined in this final chapter is intended to be a hopeful counter-narrative about the dignity, resilience and humanity of Latin@s and the prospects for thoughtful forms of political struggle. This is an uncomfortable topic. I do not want to start any class with assumptions about students. I would risk inscribing students in a neocolonial discourse of helplessness and situating myself as their savior. Aware of this risk, I believe that grappling with the challenges posed by quiet and silent students has helped me grow as an educator and raise important practical, political and theoretical issues. I also want to point out that I am not “theorizing” women of color to continue their exploitation as a means to my academic advancement.12 I hope to demonstrate that I am genuinely committed to creating a vibrant learning environment for all of my students and see the cultivation of voice as the bridge between politics and pedagogy. The conversations I had with colleagues about silence in the classroom were interesting but also shocking. Many of my political science colleagues were frustrated with students. One colleague informed me that he had “tried everything” but kept getting the same results, namely, poor performance and a high failure rate. He said “you cannot create a silk glove out of a sow’s ear.” On another occasion he stated that he could not “humiliate the students enough into caring about the subject matter.” Other more empathetic colleagues informed me that they employ a variety of activities 11 See Michelle Fine and Lois Weiss, Silenced Voices and Extraordinary Conversations: Reimagining Schools (New York: Teachers College Press, 2003). See also Listening to Teach: Beyond Didactic Pedagogy, ed. Leonard J. Waks (Albany: SUNY Press, 2015). See also James C. Scott, Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990). 12 A related concern is raised by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, “Can the Subaltern Speak?” in Colonial Discourse and Post-colonial Theory: A Reader, eds. Patrick Williams and Laura Chrisman (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994).

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in the classroom but they tend to run up against the same challenge, namely, the difficulty of sustaining student engagement throughout the semester. In the face of what they perceived to be entrenched student apathy, they gave up on trying to facilitate discussion and calling on students to speak and went back to teaching via power point slides. Other colleagues told me that they just lecture and do not worry about student silence. In addition to having conversations with colleagues about quiet students, I have asked students in my courses as well as students pursuing a political science degree questions pertaining to classroom dynamics, in particular, levels of engagement in the classroom. Many students have told me that they tend to be quiet because they do not want to speak and look foolish. Some are intimidated and they prefer to listen as a way to learn. One of the Latina students in an upper-division course had the following to say about student silence in the classroom: I have felt that heaviness and responsibility to regard a professor, especially a white male, with respect whenever they enter the classroom. Not exactly because I feel inferior, but because of my disenfranchised upbringing from education, white people, and males. Perhaps more women can relate to this: I grew up in a predominantly Hispanic community, in a patriarchal home where women do not associate with men, and where neither of my parents or anyone in my family circle, went to college. A white, male professor is the very opposite of that, so that creates a clash in cultures definitely. Before saying something, I repeat it in my head multiple times, and then speak up. Slowly, I have been adapting to the university environment and have started to lose this hyper-awareness of my difference from other people, especially males from other cultures. (Student testimonial via email, November 14, 2018, emphasis added)

It is important to point out that some students might be silent in the classroom but are talkative during office hour visits. Most of the students I asked at UTRGV do not see student silence in the classroom as a matter of concern. Nevertheless, the student I quoted above flags a complicated range of issues that I believe require a critical intersectional perspective on student silence to unpack, that is, one that highlights the interconnections between patriarchy, white privilege and poverty (more on this later) and employs utopianism in the classroom to combat these oppressive structures. In addition to speaking with students about silence, I continue to attend teaching workshops to learn how to be an effective educator (not recently though due to writing this book). Many of these workshops have been

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helpful but some of them employed a lecture model even though the theme of the workshop was how best to foster participation. In some of these workshops, the mode of participation that took place consisted of the usual five to ten minute question and answer session at the end of the workshop. The better ones emphasized the importance of student group work, presentations and a variety of other activities. In these participationoriented workshops for faculty, we experienced what an engaging classroom experience felt like through group activities. The goal was to overcome a classroom environment dominated by the instructor’s voice. I also experiment with a variety of teaching strategies that encourage students to speak in class. I find that debates, student presentations, small group activities (and avoiding power point) can be effective in soliciting student participation. These activities also set a tone in the class that students must actively participate on a regular basis as opposed to just sitting and taking notes. However, the limits involved with these approaches (e.g. lack of student preparation and basic knowledge of the reading material) prompted me to turn to the scholarly literature to try to learn something more about stimulating and sustaining class discussion. In the scholarly literature, explanations for classroom silence vary. Silent students can be the product of a long socialization process of what Paulo Freire calls the “banking model” of education (e.g. educators pour knowledge into the heads of students). Others argue that silent students have internalized norms dictating deference to authority figures.13 Some silent students are first-generation college students too exhausted to talk. They work forty hours or more a week and the styles of speech on a university campus are alien to them.14 Others argue silent students have low levels of self-confidence. This could be caused by lack of mentoring, low educational attainment in their families, a curriculum that is irrelevant to their lives and negative experiences with racist teachers and administrators.15 Other scholars view student apathy and silence as the result of the way the contributions of Latin@s to the American story are ignored.16 Not all 13 See Victor Rios, Punished, 2011. See also Marcos Pizarro, Chicanos and Chicanas in School, 2005. 14 See Stephen Gilbert Brown, Words in the Wilderness: Critical Literacy in the Borderlands (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2000). 15 See Pizarro, 2009. 16 See Michelle Fine, Framing Dropouts: Notes on the Politics of an Urban Public High

School (Albany: SUNY Press, 1991); Rodolfo Acuña, Occupied America: The Chicano’s

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scholars see silence in a negative light.17 Depending on the context, silence can be a mode of resistance.18 Someone ordered to speak can refuse. This is a sign of agency. Even though all of these explanations strike me as reasonable, there are some other pieces to the puzzle. The Texas approach to education as well as the unique culture and history of south Texas are arguably important aspects that could help us understand the range of causes for student silence. Through a combination of an under-funded public education system for the majority of Texas residents (Texas ranks near the bottom for state spending on education in the U.S.)19 and an educational approach known as “teaching to the test” many Texas students are poorly educated and not prepared for the university. Some of my students have informed me that they did not write argumentative essays in High School and that they were completely lost when I required them to do so. As a result of attending schools in the state where “the stars at night, are big and bright,” a dull malaise plagues Texas educational institutions during the day. A teacher at a local high school informed me that teachers at her particular location are routinely intimidated into passing students. Administrators can then report

Struggle Toward Liberation (San Francisco: Lanfield Press, 1972); and Gloria Anzaldúa, Borderlands/La Frontera, 2012. 17 See Mary M. Reda, Between Speaking and Silence: A Study of Quiet Students (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2009). She maintains that “silence is not necessarily problematic” as it may provide opportunities for intense reflection, pp. 18–19. For a more critical perspective on silence, see Lois Weis and Michelle Fine, Silenced Voices and Extraordinary Conversations: Re-imagining Schools (New York, NY: Teachers College Press, 2003); Lois Weis and Michelle Fine, Eds., Beyond Silenced Voices: Class, Race, and Gender in United States Schools (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1993). For a defense of voice in the classroom as a path to empower students, see Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, trans. Myra Bergman Ramos (New York, NY: Continuum Press, 2010). Finally, see Listening to Teach: Beyond Didactic Pedagogy, ed. Waks (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2015). 18 See Houston A. Baker, “Scene…not Heard,” in Reading Rodney King/Reading Urban Uprising, ed. Robert Gooding-Williams (New York, NY: Routledge, 1993). It is important to point out that silence can represent an opening for a lively discussion, where an instructor simply waits and lets the atmosphere of silence descend on a classroom until someone finally speaks. The willingness of instructors to embrace silence in the classroom as a learning tool can also signal to students that the instructor is patient and willing to invest time in the learning process. Silence can also be a valuable form of energy in the classroom that is mobilized to intensify the theatrical aspects of dialogic encounters. 19 See http://www.governing.com/gov-data/education-data/state-education-spendingper-pupil-data.html, accessed on August 12, 2017.

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100% graduation rates. Systemic neglect (e.g. under-funded schools), questionable pedagogy (e.g. teaching to the test thereby annihilating joy in learning) and exaggerating graduation and college attendance rates (e.g. cooking the books) are serious problems. Tack on high poverty rates and a historically low rate of educational attainment in south Texas. Additionally, many students lack confidence speaking English because it is their second language. They often cannot find the words in English to express themselves and are particularly vulnerable in this system. In some cases, these bilingual students are also ashamed about the version of “border” Spanish they speak because, as they tell me, it is not proper Spanish. They are also very self-conscious about their accent when they speak English. The combination of these issues make teaching in south Texas arguably more challenging in comparison to other geographical regions in the U.S. Nevertheless, I have been trying to find ways to understand and transform classroom silence. In my view, exercising voice, that is, naming oneself and the world, is a key component for developing political agency. Individuals who do not tell their own story (a key component of political agency) will have their story told by someone else.20 Scholar–teacher–activists, it seems to me, should be particularly interested in questions of political agency, especially for under-served, disproportionately poor, and marginalized groups. Political and social transformation depends on exercising voice, formulating a position of resistance and acting on it. I believe the ways I have tried to reach my students and address the importance of student voice in the classroom are relevant to the broader project of bringing about thoughtful political and social transformation. This final chapter bridges theory with practice via a critical intersectional approach and promotes “everyday utopianism” in the classroom.21 My goal is to shatter the 20 American politics is largely a symbolic exercise. Politicians tell stories about contemporary problems and who is to blame. These blame narratives propel politicians to the top via code words (e.g. welfare queens; under-serving poor; immigrant invasion; etc.) that tap into popular anger and channel it toward the most vulnerable members of society. For these and related themes, see Murray Edelman, Constructing the Political Spectacle (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1998). For the racist character of these narratives, see Ian Haney López, Dog Whistle Politics: How Coded Racial Appeals Have Reinvented Racism and Wrecked the Middle Class (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2014). For discourse analysis of narratives of blame pertaining to welfare, see Sanford F. Schram, Words of Welfare: The Poverty of Social Science and the Social Science of Poverty (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1995). 21 See Davina Cooper, Everyday Utopias: The Conceptual Life of Promising Spaces (Durham: Duke University Press, 2014).

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authority, hierarchy and knowledge nexus and open a space for pedagogy as the practice of equality.

Transforming the Classroom The first way I try to reach my students, develop an intellectual relationship with them and create a space for their voices is through a culturally relevant curriculum and critical autobiography.22 As you may have guessed, I am particularly interested in culturally relevant writings for my Latin@ students that foreground the importance of voice. Since I work with a predominantly Latin@ population, Gloria Anzaldúa’s Borderlands/La Frontera has been an indispensable literary-political masterpiece that models how to find and reclaim one’s sense of voice as both a writer and political agent via a critical stance in relation to one’s own upbringing and culture.23 In a moment of self-reflection, Anzaldúa states: “I abhor some of my culture’s ways, how it cripples its women.” She continues: “I abhor how my culture makes macho caricatures of its men.” She refused to plunge into the abyss of pessimism and locates a way out, a path to freedom: “I want the freedom to carve and chisel my own face, to staunch the bleeding with ashes, to fashion my own gods out of my entrails. And if home is denied me then I will have to stand and claim my space, making a new culture – una cultura mestiza – with my own lumber, my own bricks and mortar and my own feminist architecture.”24 In what starts as a mode of painful critique Anzaldúa identifies a way out and declares that she will “claim her space” on her own terms. Through a combination of class discussions pertaining to these citations, we explore how Anzaldúa was denied voice, what exactly denied it (e.g. patriarchy; racism; poverty; homophobia, etc.) and how Anzaldúa claimed and found her voice. We also discuss how Anzaldúa performs a foundational insight pertaining to the emancipatory project. Until one voices or

22 See Yolanda Sealey-Ruiz, “Wrapping the Curriculum Around Their Lives: Using a Culturally Relevant Curriculum with African American Adult Women,” Adult Education Quarterly 58 (2007): 44–60. See also Carlos Alberto Torres, Ed., Education, Power, and Personal Biography: Dialogues with Critical Educators (New York: Routledge, 1998). 23 See Gloria Anzaldúa, Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza, 3rd Edition (San Francisco, CA: Aunt Lute Books, 2007). 24 Gloria Anzaldúa, Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza, 3rd Edition (San Francisco, CA: Aunt Lute Books, 2007), pp. 43–44.

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writes a critical-political autobiography, one will be voiceless and someone else will write your story for you. After an analysis of Anzaldúa’s work that is more of a discussion than a lecture, students are asked to write their critical autobiography (that addresses only the aspects about themselves they feel comfortable sharing with the class). They focus on how and from whom they acquired their sense of gender identity, whether or not their gender identity allows them to flourish as a person, and whether or not their gender identity has given them a powerful voice. Students connect theory (Anzaldúa) with practice (their life). Students share what they wrote with the class, bouncing between what they learned from Anzaldúa and how it is relevant to their life and experiences. I also share aspects about my upbringing that are relevant to the discussion. Students may feel vulnerable during these exercises but it is “only by undergoing vulnerable encounters that there is any hope of learning.”25 The second way I try to develop an intellectual atmosphere that opens a space for student voice is through the inclusion of feminist perspectives (particularly ones that prioritize the centrality of voice as the foundation for political agency) in my lower- and upper-division courses.26 For the lowerlevel course, I require my students to read Andrea Dworkin’s Heartbreak: The Political Memoir of a Militant Feminist, a text written with a high level of intensity that explores patriarchal violence.27 At the upper level, my students read bell hooks’s The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity, and Love.28 In hooks’s text, she argues that capitalism and patriarchy make love conceived of as mutuality, reciprocity and partnership impossible. Patriarchy leads to rape culture, abuse and existential misery: “Women and children all over the world want men to die so that they can live.”29 For hooks, patriarchy is a form of pedagogy. It is present in popular culture via the sexual 25 Romand Coles, Visionary Pragmatism, 2016, p. 20. 26 See Feminist Pedagogy: Looking Back to Move Forward, eds. Robbin D. Crabtree, David

Alan Sapp, and Adela C. Licona (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009). See also Jeanne Brady, Schooling Young Children: A Feminist Pedagogy for Liberatory Learning (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1995). 27 Andrea Dworkin, Heartbreak: The Political Memoir of a Feminist Militant (New York, NY: Basic Books, 2002). 28 bell hooks, The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity, and Love (New York, NY: Washington Square Books, 2004). 29 hooks, 2004, xv.

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objectification of women and the view that violence is the only solution to problems. It damages the emotional life of boys. In a way that is similar to Dworkin, hooks criticizes patriarchy in order to open a glimpse of utopia. She develops a non-machismo form of masculinity based on mutuality and reciprocity as a way out of patriarchal horror.30 The assignment I ask my students to complete in reference to Dworkin and hooks requires them to interview family/friends about the particular modes of gender relationships in their households. Who does what, when, how and why? Students identify the ways in which their household is and is not a dominator/patriarchal one. Students provide specific examples when they report their findings to class. The point of this assignment is to help students achieve some critical distance from aspects of their lives that may be so close to them that they are unable to see what is going on. Oftentimes those aspects of our lives that are the closest to us go unnoticed. Critical distance from these practices is the precondition for honest evaluation and transformation. Another way of putting this is to say that students connect theory (e.g. Dworkin and hooks) to practice (e.g. their experiences and life). Most of my students say that their families are “totally equal,” that there is not a gender division of labor in their family because “everybody does everything.” In response, I ask them to think about what happens when they attend a BBQ or cookout (e.g. all of the men standing around the grill and the women cleaning up and/or prepping side dishes in the kitchen as helpers). Do the men and women separate? If so, why? Who grills the meat? Why? Who is in the kitchen? Why? At the end of the exercise, students come to different conclusions about gender relations at a south Texas cookout. That is, they can see at least a few of the daily practices in their homes with a new set of eyes. The goal is to build community through discussions about shared experiences pertaining to growing up Latina. What I call visceral learning is the third way I try to reach and develop an intellectual relationship with my students that creates a space for their voices.31 Given that my students have read Anzaldúa’s Borderlands/La Frontera, Dworkin’s Heartbreak and hooks’s The Will to Change, the stage is set for a mode of learning that tests the willingness of students to enact in the classroom core insights from the reading material. We start with a

30 See hooks, The Will to Change, 2004. 31 See Susan D. Blum, I Love Learning; I Hate School: An Anthropology of College (Ithaca:

Cornell University Press, 2016).

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citation from bell hooks. hooks states: “Learning to wear a mask is the first lesson in patriarchal masculinity that a boy learns.”32 I inform the class that we should see if what hooks says about masculinity is true. “Let’s play a game,” I say. During this activity, students play with their gender mask. Those who identify as male gather on one side of the classroom. Students who identify as female gather on the other side. I ask male students to act “feminine.” I ask female students to act “masculine.” I tell the students to take a few moments to reflect on their counter-gender performance. Then, I model both roles. When I announce that it is time for the theatre of gender to commence, the students are not comfortable with this activity and it stalls. No one is willing to play with gender masks, especially the men. I inform the class that if we understand the claim that one’s gender identity is largely a socially constructed performance that lacks an eternal and natural essence, there is no reason why all of us could not simply just act differently.33 Doing so, I suggest, would help us feel in our bodies the power of gender norms. The proper performance of gender identity is a powerful script. We may not understand and recognize this. We automatically follow it. If the unrecognized power of internalized gender roles prevents us from playing a harmless game, then they must be powerful. As I stated, this activity usually stalls and fails before it begins because the students (especially those who identify as male) refuse to act feminine (because it will be embarrassing). They claim that they do not know how to do it. The failure of this exercise is in crucial respects the point of the exercise. In class, we discuss the resistance we may observe on either side of the gender divide. How the male students stand with their arms crossed, chests puffed out and the annoyed looks on their faces. This sort of visceral learning (e.g. a learning experience involving discomfort and vulnerability) mobilizes the experience of embarrassment and vulnerability for learning. The point is to overcome silence through laughter and humor.34 I also want to engender voice via critical reflection on the invisible prison of our socialization into rape culture and the naturalization of gender identity. How do these three approaches help give students a voice? First, the course reading material relates to the life experiences of students and that 32 See hooks, 2004, p. 153. 33 See Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, trans. H. M. Parshley (New York: Vintage

Books, 1989). See also Judith Butler, Undoing Gender (New York: Routledge, 2004). 34 For the relationship between humor and critical reflection, see Simon Critchley, On Humor (New York: Routledge, 2002), pp. 16–19.

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makes it more interesting to them. I have found that students are more likely to say something about it if it is relatable. Second, students are required to connect the reading material to their own experiences. When they share these connections with the class, they talk with each other and similarities and differences with other classmates emerge which, in turn, continues the conversation and builds community. Additionally, when class activities trigger discomfort (e.g. visceral learning), this raises the stakes of the conversation about whatever is making students uncomfortable which means that it is much harder for students to disengage from the conversation. These aspects arguably constitute the classroom as a utopian space. I disrupt assumptions about what is supposed to take place in a classroom environment (e.g. lecture). I open spaces for the voices of students so that they can potentially contest some of the power relations woven into their daily experiences. These activities disrupt the authority, hierarchy and knowledge nexus that constitute traditional pedagogy.

Three Examples Example 1. As the semester in my upper division Contemporary Political Theory course was about at the halfway point, a student posed a poignant question. He asked: “When are you going to teach?” I was not being accused of being an “ignorant schoolmaster” (Rancière) but of being an incompetent one.35 The student was clearly annoyed with my teaching style. For the student, teaching meant lecturing. I was not lecturing. Hence, I was not teaching. Apparently, the time I invested trying to get students to speak via presentations, group discussions and in class debates was at odds with the mental image of what this student believed should be taking place in the classroom. I asked the student to say more about his expectations about this class, and in particular, what he meant by teach. This lead to a discussion about the point of the university, teaching, and my intention to create a space for student voice. Ultimately, I am not sure what caused the student to challenge me as an educator but I am glad that he did. I view this as a sign of life, a moment of resistance and a sign of precisely the type of defiant agency I view as a fundamental precondition for political engagement, even though the student’s question confuses lecture/monologue with education/learning. The student’s question also 35 Jacques Rancière, The Ignorant Schoolmaster: Five Lessons in Intellectual Emancipation, trans. Kristin Ross (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1991).

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contains agency (what bell hooks calls “talking back,” defined as “speaking as an equal to an authority figure”).36 The student’s question, though, simultaneously negates this agency by his yearning not to be included in the discussion and preferring the passive subject position (as opposed to the active one I was requiring). Nonetheless, the student’s question lead to a positive discussion. Example 2. According to a variety of thinkers (e.g. Sigmund Freud; Martin Heidegger), no comment or remark is without psychological and philosophical significance.37 In my upper-division theory class, a female student described what happened when she told her father about bell hooks’s main arguments pertaining to patriarchy during a family dinner conversation. hooks argues that patriarchal domination is quite common in the U.S. but it is rarely discussed. Boys are taught to suppress their emotions, the father solves problems through violence (and hooks claims they are therefore incapable of love conceived of as mutuality), and that many relationships and households are doomed to fail (substantiated by high domestic violence and divorce rates in the U.S.).38 After listening to his daughter explain hooks, she reported that her father exclaimed, “Our home is not like that.” I informed the student that I thought this was an interesting comment. I claimed that his decree, unfortunately, might confirm what it denies. The student’s father arguably refused the vulnerability involved in phrasing an open question about whether their home was in fact like the one bell hooks was describing. He simply decreed that it was not. As opposed to asking his daughter whether their home is a patriarchal one (an open question), the father decreed that his home is not a patriarchal one. The dinner conversation pertaining to hooks ended via the father’s refusal to reflect on the ways in which his home may in fact be a patriarchal one, possibly because it made him feel uncomfortable and would require him to reflect on aspects of life he had accepted as normal/natural. 36 See bell hooks, Talking Back: Thinking Feminism, Thinking Black (Boston, MA: South End Press, 1989), p. 5. 37 See Sigmund Freud, Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious, trans. James Strachey (New York: W. W. Norton, 1990). See also Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, trans. Joan Stambaugh (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2010). 38 According to the American Psychological Society, the divorce rate in the U.S. is 40–50%. See https://www.apa.org/topics/divorce/, accessed on October 31, 2018. Every day, there are 20,000 phone calls place to domestic violence hotlines. Intimate partner violence constitutes 15% of all violent crime. See https://ncadv.org/statistics, accessed on May 15, 2019.

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During this class discussion, I never said this student’s father was a bad person. However, I did say that there are different ways to have a conversation. For example, we can be open to different viewpoints and try to learn more about them. Then, we can evaluate whether or not we can learn something from them. We can be defensive when we encounter ideas that require us to reflect on what we do and who we are. We can quickly state that something does not apply to us. Because a student shared this comment made by her father, the class discussion was lively. Other students shared comments made by family members that were relevant to the broader discussion about bell hooks and patriarchal masculinity. This activity gives students critical distance from their upbringing so that they can claim a space for themselves on at least partially their own terms. This activity creates a space for the voices of my students. One of my colleagues from the political science department happened to be visiting my course on the day when a female student informed the class about what her father said. My colleague included the following in his teaching observation report: In one of the most illuminating sections of the class, the instructor encouraged students to relate their personal experiences with being different and evaluate their treatment and their reactions to it. This is a delicate situation. It is one of those areas that many teachers (myself included) are uneasy about broaching. Many students are understandably reluctant to divulge details about their personal lives, particularly those about which they may harbor some to considerable embarrassment. The instructor handled this with delicacy, a soft touch, and considerable empathy. His probing led several students to come forward with and discuss personal experiences that I would not have thought they would divulge. Not only that, the other students in the class reacted admirably. Their questions and responses were thoughtful and supportive. As far as I could tell, no one felt threatened and no one felt misused after the discussion.39

As this statement indicates, bridging course material with the lived experiences of students is a great way to bring the course material to life and stimulate modes learning that foster self-growth and voice. It can be gentle, respectful and build a learning environment characterized by trust.

39 James Wenzel, “Classroom Observation Report on Contemporary Political Theory,” November 20, 2017, unpublished.

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Example 3. A female student informed the class that her father told her she “looked dead.” I asked her to explain. Apparently, she was not wearing any make-up. She also shared that her mother told her that her black backpack made her look “butch.” I suggested that perhaps these were harmless and innocent claims. For fun, I suggested that we analyze and discuss these statements. A class discussion ensued about the mask of make-up that paradoxically makes one’s face look alive when it is in fact fake and hidden behind a Revlon veil. I suggested that conforming to the social dictate that women always wear make-up (even while sleeping) might be the real form of death because one is not living for oneself but submitting to expectations pertaining to how women should appear. When this student’s father said she “looked dead,” the social norm was speaking through him. A heated discussion ensued and other female students shared their experiences pertaining to the patriarchal enforcement of their proper appearance in terms of attire and make-up. The backpack “butch” reference led to a discussion about the limited range of costumes (exemplified in the ideal types of nun, prostitute and mother [at least according to Gloria Anzaldúa]) mandated as the proper forms for female gender identity.40 Another student said she has to act dumb to get boys to like her. Another said that unlike many of her friends, she refused to “use her body” at work to make tips and refused to work at Hooters, Titled Kilt and other sports bars where women are required to wear sexualized and revealing uniforms to earn tips by way of the sexual stimulation of men.

Conclusion These three examples illustrate the effectiveness of a critical intersectional perspective on pedagogy. This involves including (1) a culturally relevant curriculum; (2) critical autobiography; (3) feminist perspectives; and (4) visceral learning as a way to open a space for the voices and experiences of my students. Schools are spaces for learning but also for the development of a positive self-concept and identity formation.41 Some of my colleagues have voiced frustration with students. As opposed to blaming students, they need to look to themselves. Students have so much to say if the context allows them to speak. I continue to be impressed by the level of student

40 See Anzaldúa, Borderlands/La Frontera, 2007. 41 See Pizarro, 2005, p. 120.

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engagement in my classes. These practices lay the groundwork for student voice but I have learned that they require patience, trust and believing in students. Additionally, what worked in one class may not work in a different one. Nevertheless, if students are not able to connect the course material to their own lives, then they will probably not speak. If I fail to assign readings that allow this, then that means I am the problem, not them. Just like an elected official, I have to address the needs of my constituents. As a teacher, I need to rethink what I am asking them to read. I need to rethink and reinvent what I do in the classroom and learn more about the particular people with whom I work. I need to get out of my comfort zone and put myself in new situations that allow me to learn. I need to grow, learn and listen in order to become a better educator. As Romand Coles puts it, “it is often nearly impossible to hear another person or group of people well if one has not spent time in their very different spaces and been proximate to their discrepant conditions and modes of being.”42 To repeat, I am the problem to the extent that I know nothing about my students and stand in the way of students speaking. The authority, hierarchy and knowledge nexus silences students. Pedagogy as the practice of equality opens a space for the voices of students. It is important to point out that the pedagogical approach I am defending can lead to painful realizations. A female student in my class informed me that via Fanon, Freire, hooks, Dworkin and other authors, she had realized her entire education thus far had been, to use her words, “completely worthless.” Up to this point in her life, she was required to take tests about material that had little or nothing to do with her lived experience. As a result, learning lacked joy and relevance for her. I shared with her that I had a similar revelation when I was an undergraduate. I explained that it was not her fault. A real education was unlikely to occur in the typical institutionalized settings where teachers adhere to modes of pedagogy that perpetuate the authority, hierarchy and knowledge nexus. I concluded by saying that it was better to have this realization now than not to have it at all because at least now she could take steps to acquire a different form of education, one based on the practice of equality. Someone might object and say my approach risks taking content out of the classroom, or displacing it, in favor of turning the classroom into some sort of political correctness therapy session. I understand these objec42 See Romand Coles, Beyond Gated Politics: Reflections for the Possibility of Democracy (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2005), p. 223.

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tions, especially in the current climate characterized by the obsession with assessment and the right-wing domination of the media with pundits who routinely demonize the professoriate. The design of my course addresses both issues. Students have to master course content that includes reading material from a wide variety of perspectives, write several argumentative essays that require refutation of counter-arguments (meaning that all students have to engage in critical thinking and acknowledge the weaknesses of all positions), present course material to the class and bridge theory and practice in a community engagement project. Assessment takes place via grading rubrics that align with course learning outcomes. The classroom atmosphere I construct around student voice is not a political correctness therapy session. Rather, I ensure course content is relevant to the lives of students. Via reading and discussions, students realize no position is completely correct, that politics is about arguing and providing reasons and evidence, an always selective and imperfect practice. This work involving a culturally relevant curriculum, critical autobiography, feminist perspectives and visceral learning has helped me to overcome silence in the classroom and position students as people capable of understanding and resisting oppression. The type of agency this work engenders—critical and defiant subjectivity—is clearly applicable to broader social, political and economic contexts. Voice is a foundation stone for political practice and consciousness. What we do and how we do it in the classroom has significant and long-term political implications. Building the agency and voice of students in the classroom connects to the emancipatory project. In a real democracy, all change comes from below, requires voice and depends on the agency of everyone, including the silent (or silenced) ones. In the classroom, students need to speak and we need to listen. Pedagogical approaches that confront the intersectional bases of oppression are best suited to addressing what I perceive to be the needs of my students at UTRGV, especially the silent ones. What I have attempted to do in the classroom does not put off utopia into the distant future. Rather, I try to create the type of utopian pedagogy and practices in the classroom today. The risk with all of this is that what I am proposing is yet another form of colonial domination but possibly worse in this case because it is wrapped in the rhetoric of the emancipatory project. I disagree. Helping my students speak and name their experiences disrupts any sort of pre-conceived agenda and concept I may have about them. I work with my students from their

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point of departure but this ultimately depends on my capacity to create a space for them to speak. This has required me to repeatedly reinvent myself as an educator and deconstruct my privileged position as a white male as a way to build trust in the classroom. Creating spaces for their voices is my way to ascertain where they are so I can best help them. A critical intersectional approach to teaching combined with everyday utopianism turns the classroom into a space of freedom, joy and laughter. Shattering the authority, hierarchy and knowledge nexus by including student voice in the classroom opens a horizon for pedagogy as the utopian practice of equality.