America on the Edge: Henry Giroux on Politics, Culture, and Education

263 Pages·2006·1.493 MB·English

by  Henry A. Giroux (auth.)

Additional Praise for America on the Edge:
“Giroux is one of our most passionate and intelligent public intellectuals, comment-
ing on an impressively wide range of social, political and economic developments,
always with a concern for the necessary pedagogical role of culture. He has steadfastly
defended the possibilities of a more humane world and criticized every institution,
every ideology, every assumption, and every group that has stood in the way of or
actively opposed the making of such a world. These essays are Giroux at his best, ana-
lyzing and criticizing the changing organizations of power in the United States and
their effects on the larger world, and calling out to anyone who will listen that that
world is possible.”
—Lawrence Grossberg, author of Caught in the Crossfire:
Kids, Politics and America’s Future
Praise for Take Back Higher Education:
“Reminiscent of C. Wright Mills’ The Sociological Imagination...this updated, nec-
essary call for action for all academicians is refreshing...”
—Choice
“Henry and Susan Giroux are performing an immense public service with this book.
It is a sweeping critique of how our culture, especially the educational establishment,
has failed to prepare us for the crises of our time. And it offers hope for the possibility
of resisting that and creating a new culture, inspirational and profoundly democratic.”
—Howard Zinn, author of A People’s History of the United States
“Henry and Susan Girouxís extraordinary book is an electrifying call to educators to
renounce political passivity and to assume the role of public intellectuals prepared to
take back schools and universities from the predations of a business driven ideology
that silences dissent and undermines democracy. A beautifully fashioned work of cul-
tural history, it is also a rich and stimulating brew of elegant analysis and powerful
polemic. Teachers from the kindergarten classrooms to the ivory tower will be grate-
ful for the hope and affirmation the Girouxs’ have given us. All in all, a magnificent
achievement.”
—Jonathan Kozol
“Here, at last, is a critical study in the social sciences that explores with brilliant icon-
oclasm the connection between the post-9/11 de-democratization of America, the
erosion of its politics and its civil rights, its inexorable drift into rapid conservatism,
and recent attacks on the form and substance of higher education. Argued with enor-
mous conviction and considerable insight, Take Back Higher Education does for
contemporary pedagogy what the likes of John Dewey did for it long ago: insist that
the health of our society depends not on consumption or the rampant production of
wealth for the rich, but on educating new generations of citizens for open, informed
public engagement, for constructive political involvement, for commitment to a
social world built on justice and empowerment for all; in short, for all the things
currently under threat in the security-obsessed, frightened USA of the early twenty-
first century. Here, in other words, is a charter for real freedom through enlighten-
ment, a charter that ought to have been accomplished two hundred or so years ago,
but still requires a good fight. Henry and Susan Giroux have undertaken that fight
with vigor, energy, and consummate intelligence.”
—John Comaroff, University of Chicago
America on the Edge
Henry Giroux on Politics, Culture,
and Education
Henry A. Giroux
AMERICAONTHEEDGE
© Henry A.Giroux,2006.
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2006 978-1-4039-7160-9
All rights reserved.No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any
manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief
quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.
First published in 2006 by
PALGRAVE MACMILLAN™
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Companies and representatives throughout the world.
PALGRAVE MACMILLAN is the global academic imprint of the Palgrave
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Union and other countries.
ISBN 978-1-349-53303-9 ISBN 978-1-4039-8436-4 (eBook)
DOI 10.1057/9781403984364
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Giroux,Henry A.
America on the edge :Henry Giroux on politics,culture,and
education / Henry A.Giroux.
p.cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1.Critical pedagogy—United States.2.United States—Politics and
government—2001– I.Title
LC196.5.U6G563 2006
370.11(cid:2)5—dc22 2005056613
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Design by Newgen Imaging Systems (P) Ltd.,Chennai,India.
First edition:April 2006
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
For Susan, again and again
For Brett, Chris, and Jack
For Micaela and Don
For Grizz
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Contents
Preface and Acknowledgments ix
Introduction
1 Henry Giroux on Critical Pedagogy and the
Responsibilities of the Public Intellectual 3
Part I America Under Siege: Authoritarianism and Democracy
2 The Conservative Assault on America: Cultural Politics,
Education, and the New Authoritarianism 23
3 Democracy and the Crisis of Public Education: Co-Authored
with Susan Searls Giroux 43
4 From Auschwitz to Abu Ghraib: Rethinking Representation
as Public Pedagogy 53
Part II Against Fundamentalism: Resisting Religious
Extremism and Market Orthodoxy
5 Rapture Politics and the Passion of the Religious Right 71
6 Academic Entrepreneurs: The Corporate Takeover of
Higher Education 89
Part III Media Pedagogy: Rethinking Political
and Cultural Literacy
7 Roll Over George Orwell: Representations of
Newspeak in Bush’s America 101
8 Breaking into the Movies: Film as Cultural Politics 117
9 Nymphet Fantasies: Child Beauty Pageants and the
Politics of Innocence 129
viii/ contents
Part IV Race, Surveillance, and Social Justice
10 Racial Politics, Individualism, and the Collapse of the Social 151
11 Disposable Youth, Racism, and the Politics of Zero Tolerance 175
Part V Militarization, Masculinity, and the Spectre of Fascism
12 Waging War On Democracy: The Militarizing of Public Space 191
13 Private Satisfactions and Public Disorder: Fight Club,
Patriarchy, and the Politics of Masculine Violence 205
Part VI Youth, Pedagogy, and the Politics of Hope
14 The Abandoned Generation: The Urban Debate League
and the Politics of Possibility 229
15 Putting Youth Back into Politics: Reclaiming Education and
Hope in Dark Times 237
16 Translating the Future: Speaking to Graduating Youth 253
Index 257
Preface and Acknowledgments
America on the Edgedeveloped out of an attempt to theorize a number of emerging
antidemocratic tendencies that bespeak of an accelerating and dangerous movement
toward authoritarianism in the United States. At the current historical moment, the
United States is in the hands of extremists who are deeply committed to a politics
that serves the needs of those groups who advocate empire, corporate power, religious
fundamentalism, militarism, and waging an assault against critical thought at all
levels of public and higher education as well as the mass media. Fundamentalisms of
various stripes now provide the most powerful governing principles in American
society, organizing everything from how we view politics to how we dispense contra-
ceptive drugs for women, inserting biblical literalism into the school curriculum and
making the market the template for all social relations. Most disturbing, the plagues
of terror and violence have now merged within a war on terrorism that has become
the rallying cry for the Bush administration’s state of permanent war at home and
abroad. The war on terrorism is now being used to camouflage tyranny at home and
to launch an imperial war in Iraq through a phony appeal to democracy further
mystified by a thick fog of lies and fabrication. As Hannah Arendt once said, we are
living in dark times.
At the highest levels of government and business, power betrays a contempt for
democratic values, identities, and practices. For example, individuals are abducted by
the CIA and sent to foreign countries to be tortured, while helpless prisoners are tor-
tured by U.S. soldiers—and all of this is now common knowledge around the world.
Civil liberties are being shredded in the name of a war against terrorism that increas-
ingly mimics the same horrifying practices it condemns. Enron, Tyco International,
and Worldcom provide a chilling display of corporate greed, arrogance, and dishon-
esty, and yet the power of multinational corporations and financial capital to shape
and influence major policy decisions at all levels of government has increased just as
regulatory government agencies are being dismantled or severely weakened. At the
same time, corporate power is unanchored from the boundaries of nation-states and
floats above the traditional spheres of politics, regulation, and control—wrecking
havoc, poverty, and insecurity as a byproduct of negative globalization. At home,
Halliburton is the poster child of political cronyism, and Wal-Mart is the current
corporate model for how to cheat workers, break unions, and destroy small businesses.
The Bush administration’s series of tax cuts for the wealthy, coupled with a tax code
designed to levy a tax on consumption instead of on income, has bankrupted both
the states and federal government. The goal here is to privatize Social Security, public