Critical University: Moving Higher Education Forward PDF
Preview Critical University: Moving Higher Education Forward
Critical University Critical University Moving Higher Education Forward Tanya Loughead Foreword by Peter McLaren LEXINGTONBOOKS Lanham•Boulder•NewYork•London PublishedbyLexingtonBooks AnimprintofTheRowman&LittlefieldPublishingGroup,Inc. 4501ForbesBoulevard,Suite200,Lanham,Maryland20706 www.rowman.com UnitA,WhitacreMews,26-34StannaryStreet,LondonSE114AB Copyright©2015byLexingtonBooks Allrightsreserved.Nopartofthisbookmaybereproducedinanyformorbyany electronicormechanicalmeans,includinginformationstorageandretrievalsystems, withoutwrittenpermissionfromthepublisher,exceptbyareviewerwhomayquote passagesinareview. BritishLibraryCataloguinginPublicationInformationAvailable LibraryofCongressControlNumber:2015950720 ISBN978-0-7391-9375-4(cloth:alk.paper) ISBN978-1-4985-2631-9(electronic) TMThepaperusedinthispublicationmeetstheminimumrequirementsofAmerican NationalStandardforInformationSciencesPermanenceofPaperforPrintedLibrary Materials,ANSI/NISOZ39.48-1992. PrintedintheUnitedStatesofAmerica Contents Foreword vii PeterMcLaren Acknowledgments xv 1 RaisinganEyebrowattheUniversity 1 2 RadicalTeaching 37 3 Freedom-Work 49 4 CriticallyThinkingAboutWhat“CriticalThinking”Is 57 5 Method,bellhooks,andPauloFreire 69 6 Conclusion:CriticalUniversity 81 Bibliography 89 Index 95 v Foreword Peter McLaren The university has always been a contested site. But until the past half- century the forms and manners of contestation were mostly relegated to debates over how best to serve the public good and educate citizens to pre- servewhatwasstillredeemablefromAmericantraditionsandfosterprogres- sivesocialchange.Today’scaptainsofthecorporateuniversitywouldassur- edly pause and perhaps snicker at such goals, if not wantonly abominating themfromabusinessperspectiveasswathedinsupineignorance,thenasso- ciatingthemwithancienthistory—perhapstheLyceumofAthenspopulated by Aristotle and his peripatetic followers pacing back and forth in endless dialogueoverthepotentialityofmatter.Overthepastseveraldecadesalone, thepoliticalcenterofgravityhaschangeddramaticallythroughoutcampuses nationwide, so much so that the goal of creating a critical citizenry whose social responsibility is the deepening of democracy in all spheres of public life is now relegated to the odd syllabus posted on Facebook by “radical” educators in the humanities and social sciences and even at times in some colleges of education. In the 1980s, when I first started teaching in the academy, many of my colleagues agreed with me that the role of teaching critical citizenship was too conservative, that we needed to move beyond incremental reform and—followingtheadviceof my mentorPaulo Freire— createmultipolarsites,withintheuniversity,ofpopulardemocracybolstered bypluriversityandinterculturality.Today,eventhosetepidliberalinitiatives ofthe1980sseemafundamentalthreattothelifebloodofthemodernuniver- sity. Toanyalertcriticoftheuniversitywhoautomaticallyrecognizesthatthe production of knowledge is always a form of political action (Neary, 2012), the corporatization of the academy by “equity” specialists, venture capital- ists,andhedgefundmanipulatorswasvisiblyandirrevocablyforeshadowed vii viii Foreword during the Reagan years when corporations amassed excessive power over thepublicsphere,initiatingamoralpanicsurroundingtheroleofrace,class, gender,andsexualityin requiredcourses.At thesame time thismoralpanic (in some ways a manufactured crisis) failed to address the attending trauma of therole playedbyneoliberal capitalism. The commodificationof all offi- cial knowledge within the distorted legality of the state, and the spurious origin of all value production in the expropriation of the labor power of the worker (whether knowledge worker, cognitariat, or proletariat) is especially clearinanageofincreasingfeesandcostsofeducation. Universities are no longer democratizing institutions. The university op- erates more like a Civil War stockade or debtor’s prison beholden to corpo- rate managers whose market sovereignty has become the bulwark behind whichneoliberalideologycanrunamokonuniversitycampuses,masquerad- ingasanecessaryinvestmentintrainingfornewskillsetsforthemodernage fueledbyacompetitiveglobaleconomyinwhichwearedestinedtofunction aslifelonglearners.Anewregimeofaccumulationknownascognitivecapi- talism appeared, with attendant new forms of cognitive labor that needed to bedisciplined.Withintheuniversity,cognitivecapitalismhasbecomeanew regime of accumulation, a training ground for capitalist cognitive labor whereknowledgeservesastheprimecommodity(Neary,2012).Theprevail- ing marketized system of social development, the disappearance of shared governance—exceptasacorporateruse—andthebrutalconditionssurround- ingcontingentworkers(thathasmanypart-timefacultydependentuponfood stampstosurvive)hasturneduniversitiesintothemaquiladorasofacademic capitalism. Part-time faculty labor functions as a precariat sepulchered in a climateofservilityandpressure. The university is no longer being held accountable to society; it has become an instrument of divide and rule within the capitalist system. The normalizing gaze of the neoliberal academy treats knowledge as absolute, congealed and reified, in antiseptic isolation from the contextual specificity of its modes of production and social relations of distribution and consump- tion. For example, it is no longer a stage-whispered secret that the United States has become “the first genuine prison society in history” and the “world’slargestjailor”(Street,2001).Thisracism-inducedspawningofover twomillionprisoncellsisnowanintegralpartofaschool-to-prisonpipeline fertilized by white supremacy and the cash-nexus logic of what Street calls “correctionalKeynesianism.”Inthewordsofsinger-songwriterLeonardCo- hen,“everybodyknows”butunfortunatelytoofewpeopleintheacademyare talkingaboutit. An historical reversal of the underground railroad or “freedom train” thatbecameactiveaftertheFugitiveSlaveActof1850,correctionalKeyne- sianism has rapidly accelerated the growth of the prison population, and the result,asweallknow(especiallysinceFergusonandBaltimore),hasbeena
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