CRITICAL
PEDAGOGY AND LIBERATION THEOLOGY: BORDERS FOR A TRANSFORMATIVE AGENDA.
Barry KanpolDepartment of EducationalFoundations
Penn State-Harrisburg
Praxisis a specifickind of obediencethat organizesitself around a socialtheory of reality in order to implement in the society the freedom, inherent in faith. If faith is the belief in God created all for freedom, then praxis is the social theory used to analyze what must be done for the historical realization of freedom.To singabout freedom and to pray for its comingis not enough. Freedom must be actualized in history by oppressed peoples who accept the intellectual challenge to analyze the world for the purpose of changing it.’
INTRODUCTION
In my mind, the time has come for the educational Left, particularly those involved with what is commonly thought of as the critical pedagogymovement, to come to terms with the profound theological possibilities and implications of its work. With the advent of Jonathan Kozolls devastating description and critique of inner-city schools in the United States, critical pedagoguesin the educational arena have offereda deconstructive analysis of structural school issues around race, class, and gender, much of which has led to feelings of hopelessness and despair.2Yet, ultimately, the question zyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcbaZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFEDCBA to what end must be seriously dealt with. While this article couldbe judged to be more of the same deconstruction, one of my central points will be to elaborate on alternative ways to deliberate about what a social transformation for schools might yield. I want to explorethe thoughts and ideas expressedin James Cone’s opening quotation. His view of freedom is bound up within the dialectic of faith and struggle, the attempt both to challenge and to undo one’s oppression.
Cone’s message echoes Sharon Welch’s view of how dangerous memories ”become dangerous when they are used as the foundation for a critique of existing institutions andideologiesthat blur the recognition and denunciation of inj~stice.”~ Using Martin Luther King as an example, Welch argues that social transformation must start with the existing critique of dominant and oppressivesocial and cultural structures. Forthis critiquetohaveanytransformativepossibilities, these memories and subsequent critiques “must propel people to courageous acts of resistance’’ while simultaneously never losinga “deepandabidingjoy in thewonder of life./I4For both Welch and Cone, the spiritual reality of such joy and hope for transformation challenges oppression, alienation, and subordination.
1.See JamesCone, Speaking the Truth:Ecumenism, Liberation and Black Theology (GrandRapids, Mich.: W.B. Erdmans, 1986)for the connections between faith, freedom, and liberation.
2. See Jonathan Kozol, Savage Inequalities [New York: Crown, 1991)for his descriptions of inner-city school realities.
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3. Sharon Welch, A Feminist Ethic zyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcbaZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFEDCBA of Risk (Minneapolis:Fortress Press, 1990),155.
4. Ibid.
EDUCATIONAL THEORY zyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcbaZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFEDCBA / Winter 1996 / Volume 46 / Number 1 zyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcbaZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFEDCBA
0 1996 Board of Trustees / University of Illinois
In thismanuscript I compareand contrast somebasictenets
zyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcbaZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFEDCBAof criticalpedagogy with the ideals of liberation theology, as a startingpoint to reframing an alternative vision forthe educationalLeft.jBothparadigmsarecenteredaroundatransformative consciousness. Their different images around language, metaphors, and symbols, however, suggest a differencein how transformation may be achieved. In my view, these differencesshould be seen as mutually reinforcing and interactive, rather than merely dualistic or in opposition. My hope is to provide a perspective that will broaden our view of how we might pursue a social transformative agenda.
CRITICAL PEDAGOGY TENETS LIBERATION THEOLOGYIDEALS
Languageof Possibility
Sense of the Possible Terrain of Struggle
Sense of the Sacred Transformative Intellectual Teacher as Prophet
Group Solidarity Co-Workers
Border Crossings BreakingBread and Talking Back
LANGUAGEOF POSSIBILITY AND SENSEOF THE POSSIBLE
of possibility is a term both used and understood for its specific social and cultural transformative potential. Simply put, a language of possibility is the beginning point that a teacher uses to redefine the classroom as a political space. This language of possibility must be informed by understanding, searching for, and empathizing with the voices of those who suffer social injustices.
For the critical pedagogue, the zyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcbaZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFEDCBA language zyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcbaZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFEDCBA
In the critical pedagogy tradition, a voice depicts the historical make-up and social experiences of individuals who have been at once alienated, oppressed, and subordinated.6A language of possibility allows students and teachers to share and understand their respective voices in light of structural configurations, such asrace, class,gender,and age.These different voicesexpressdifferent identities, evenforthe same person: one possesses multiple identities concurrently zyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcbaZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFEDCBA - for example, as father,friend, teacher, oppressor,oppressed,authority, authoritarian,and lover.Not all voices, or all identities, find equal expression or respect. The language of possibility presupposes that through understanding one’sown andtheOther’svoice, teachers and students can begin to act as change agents to alter present oppressive social and cultural conditions that shape, constitute, and restrain different voice^.^
5. In my forthcoming book I carry the analysis of this article further by arguing that an educational Left vision must not only be grounded in critique, which can at times be cynical, but also be cemented in joy. For a philosophical treatise of “joy” as affirmation as well as a necessary condition for social and political transformation, seeMichael Hardt, GillesDeleuze [Minncapolis:University of Minnesota Press, 19931,esp. 46-47,53-55, 58-59, 94-100, 117-19, 121-22.For a summary of joy as part of emancipatory hope, see Barry Kanpol, Teachers Talking Rack and Breaking Bread. [NewYork: SUNY, forthcoming).
6. For much more on “voice” see Peter McLaren, Life in Schools /NewYork: Longman, 1994 J for a clear analysis, cspecially 222 -28, 232-33.
7. I am hesitant to use Other as a marker foridentifying those who are marginalized andoppressed.The fact that I can name Other at first distances me, and concurrently works to name and stereotype difference.
BARRY KANPOL is Associate Professor in the Department of Educational Foundation at Penn StateHarrisburg, 177 W. Harrisburg Pike, Middletown, PA 17057-4898. His primary areas of scholarship are critical pedagogy, multiculturalism, liberation theology, and popular culture.
“Voice” also depicts social contradictions: for example, the voice of a professor, whose immediate identity can hypothetically be African American and female,has historically been subjugated by race and gender.”Yet this professorial voice may assume a position of power and authority when dealingwith others.‘ The language of possibility seeks to understand such contradictions as a starting point toward enlightenment and social transformation.
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An alternative to the language of possibility that arises within liberation theology is centered around the notion of a zyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcbaZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFEDCBA sense zyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcbaZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFEDCBA
of the possible. A “sense of the possible” also recognizesthe importance of voice for social transformation. Pushed further, a sense of the possible emphasizes that pedagogy must be spiritually restorative aswell aspolitically transformative. That is, thehuman spirit’sdesirefor being is a spiritual struggleof the most radical order.lOHumanaction is constitutive of the soul.Human action in the spiritual sense merges a spiritual meaning into the dialectic of self and other and the dialectic of structure and human agency. Unlike alanguageof possibility, then,within asenseof thepossiblethe pedagogue’sstruggle is inherently spiritual, informed by a subject who is at once both inward and expressive, reactive and proactive. Understood in a different way, a sense of the possible connotes using the higher powers of one’spersonal faith to search for and elucidate a revolutionary praxis that expressesa moral and ethical self.It seems to me that this basic point of view helped Paulo Freire’s practice, as he related his teaching to certain Catholic traditions. zyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcbaZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFEDCBA
Startingoff with Abraham Heschel’sbasicquestion of ”Whois Man?“a sense of the possible presupposes man in partnership with higher powers (inHeschel’s case, as a Jew, his convictions for God12or in Cornel West’s case, as a revolutionary Christian, Christ as the son of God13)in a struggleover meaningand living one’slife in a morally righteous way. Clearly, Old Testament images of Abraham and Moses and New Testament narratives of Christ portray social revolutionaries in the light of their ethics and spirituality. These human and spiritual beings, as we know, struggled within societies that constantly opposed or ignored their messages. As Heschel informs us, man’s strugglefor justice and peace is in a holy way connected to faith in God as partner in a partisan struggle toward an ethical, moral, and
8. For an excellent analysis on this position, see Beverly Gordon, “The Fringe Dwellers: Afro-American Women in the Post-Modern Era,”in CriticalMulticulturalism: UncommonVoicesina Common Struggle, ed. Barry Kanpol and Peter McLaren [Westport, Conn.: Bergin and Gamey, 1995)59-88.
9. See Cornel West, Prophetic Reflections [Monroe, Me.: Common Courage Press, 1993).
10.This argument is brilliantly taken up by Jonathan Kovel in History and Spirituality:An Inquiry into the Philosophy of Liberation (Boston: Beacon Press, 1991).
11, For more on this see Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed [NewYork: Seabury Press, 1974).
12.For an excellent philosophical and spiritualtreatiseof this question, seeAbraham Heschel, WhoisMan! [Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1965).
13. Cornel West’s analysis of a liberatory struggle based on his faith can be linked to his Mamian analysis of society. For West, prophetic Christianity and social analysis are inseparable. With this in mind, West connects the dialectic of human nature to human history in his discussion of emancipatory possibilities, particularly as related to Black communities. See Cornel West, Prophesy Deliverance: An AfricanAmerican Revolutionary Christianity [Philadelphia:The Westminster Press, 1982).
spiritually restorative order. I would agree with David Purpel’s claim that the narrative of Jesus, as that of Moses, can serve paradigmatically to help the Left address critical issues of injustice and other hegemonic features of our society such aspatriarchy. Purpelviews these narratives as stories of unconditional love,
“anidea that has provoked enormous controversy with extraordinary consequence^."'^ For both Purpel and Heschel, man’s spiritual struggle is an endeavor of the holiest order. And while it may seem utopian to imagine that spirituality and unconditional love will alone revolutionize schools, I would agree with Sallie McFague when she comments:
It is surely folly to continue to encourage in ourselves and those whom we influence, individualistic, hierarchical, dualistic, and utilitarian ways of thinking that are outmoded and have proved to be destructive of life at all levels.15
If McFague is correct, there can be little doubt that a bridge between the critical language of the Left and the spiritual language of liberation theologies warrants a closer investigation; both perspectives on education have similar ends of social transformation in mind.
TERRAIN OF STRUGGLEAND SENSEOF THE SACRED
Thenotion of terrain of struggle is an idea that critical theorists have previously developed in describing the social and cultural conditions that progressive teachers and other cultural workers face in their daily social transformative agendas.16This terrain of struggleisboth a cultural and political space.Within this terrain, teachers, forexample, are viewed as potentially counterhegemonic agents who can challenge and transform dominant and oppressive values such as excessive competition, rampant individualism, and race, class, and gender stereotypes. Their terrain, schools,haveoftenresistedchange,miredinthevalues of patriarchy,authoritarianism, hand-me-down curriculum, social efficiency, and technical rationality.” Stanley Aronowitz and Henry Giroux argue that to be involved in this struggle means to understand the multiple roles and identities that teachers embody as well as help to create in their students.’*These multiple roles and identities are part of what JeanFranGois Lyotard calls “the postmodern condition“ and, as I discussed earlier, are constitutive of multiple voices.l9 Simply put, within this postmodem struggle, where differencebecomes the marker for identity, teachersoccupy a terrain in which
14.See David Purpel, “Review Article: Schooling as a Ritual Performance,” Educational zyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcbaZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFEDCBA Theory38, no. 1 [Winter 1988):155-63.
15. See Sallie McFague, “A New Sensibility,” in Svi Shapiro and David Purpel, Critical Social Issues in American Education (NewYork: Longman, 19931,414.
16.See Stanley Aronowitz and Henry Giroux, Education Still Under Siege (Westport, Conn.: Bergin and Gamey, 1994)for a deeper understanding of this terrain of struggle.
17. See Michael Apple, Teachers and Texts (London: Routledge, 1988)for more of this history
18.This argument, of course, is related to McLaren’snotion of voice but can be traced back to Freire’suse of the dialogical method as a means to liberate the oppressed.
19. See rean-Francois Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition (Minneapolis:University of Minnesota Press, 1984)for a summary statement on postmodernism. An excellent analysis of the relationship of Lyotard to education can be seen in a number of essays in Education and the Postmodern Condition, ed. Michael Peters [Westport, Conn.: Bergin and Gamey, 1995).
both reproduction and production are possible; they have the potential to alienate, subordinate]and oppress,or tohelp producealternative meaning systems that would challenge and change what schools have historically been.20
of the sacred grows out of religious ideals, bordering the terrain of struggle. The sacred denotes what is “clean” or acceptable behavior.21The New and Old Testaments, for instance, attest to particular sacred behaviors, often interpreted in multiple ways, within biblical narratives. Comments bell hooks:
As a theological construct, the zyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcbaZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFEDCBA sense zyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcbaZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFEDCBA
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I think that ironically, despite all its flaws, religion was one of those places that expanded our existence. The very fact that in Christian religion Jesus made miracles, well kids growing up in the Christian Church may learn all this other reactionary dogma, but they’ll also learn something of an appreciation for mystery and magic.
those biblical stories are fascinating, David and Goliath,Moses parting the Red Sea...not only are they fascinating, but they also keep you in touch with the idea that there are forcesat work on our livesbeyond the world of “reason” and the intellect. So this turning away from religion (in Black culture from traditional black religion)has also meant turning away from a realm of the sacred -a realm of mystery -that has been deeply helpful to us as apeople.Thisis not to say that oneonly finds asense of the sacred in traditional Christian faiths.It just seemsto be avery tragic losswhen we assimilate the values of a technocratic culture that does not acknowledge those higher forms of mystery or even try to make sense of them.22
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Clearly,hooks views the sacredasholy ground,a belief in the mystery of knowledge, with the potential to travel beyondthe realm of the known into the uncharted waters of the mysterious. Exploring the unknown a little further, I connect the sacred to what Cornel West describes as combative spirituality: Combative spirituality sustains persons in their humanity but also transcends solely the political. It embraces a political struggle, but it also dealswith issues of death or dread, of despair or disappointment a combative spirituality accents a political struggle but goes beyond it by looking death and dread and despair and disappointment and disease in the face and saying that there is in fact a hope beyond these?)
The sense of the sacred for West and for hooks, as Christians, is a belief that there exists a transcendentalism that guides our personal hopes and dreams. Both have argued and confessed that Black faith in God is in part a healing process, part of the long tradition of religious faith in the sacredwithin the Black community. Struggle, hardship, and authentic belief in thetranscendental]theyargue,have been countered by a middle-class ideology that has left not only Black America, but also white America, in a state of spiritual despair, lacking “combative spirituality.’’ Michael Lerner, from a Jewishperspective, sees the project of the Jewishpeople as embracing this same sort of combative spirituality. He arguesthat the Jewish historical project is one of witnessing “the possibility of healing, repair, and transformation of the world, and the rejection of allformsof cynicism and despair.”24Lerneralso confesses,
20. See Svi Shapiro, Between Capitalism and Democracy [Westport, Conn.: Bergin and Garvey, 1990)for this analysis.
Crisis in Education (Westport, Conn.: Bergin and Garvey, 19891, 75-77.
21. See David Purpel, The Moral and Spiritual zyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcbaZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFEDCBA
22. See bell hooks, Outlaw Culture:Resisting Representation (NewYork: Routledge, 1994)226-27.
23. See West, Prophetic Reflections, 109.
24. See Michael Lerner, [ewish Renewal (NewYork: G.P. Putman’s Sons, 19941,xviii
however, as do hooks and West, that mainstream Judaism has assimilated itself into American material life, at the expense of witnessing to others the spiritual messages that the Old Testament delivered. Lerner points out a contradiction within Modern Judaism:
In practice, Jewish caring was often limited to caring about Jews. So, as children, they had experienced a community that was giving off two very different messages: one about caring for others; another, often given with greater emotional charge, that we should stop giving to others and worry only about ourselves.25
West, hooks, andLernerpoint out that nihilism andprivilegehave robbedthe middle class of a socialconsciousness, acombativespirituality, and a senseof the sacred.Yet the attainment of middle-class security should inspire, as a responsibility to oneself and to the disadvantaged,the obligation to giveto otherswho donot have. This brings me back to the sacred as holy and moral territory. The sacred is about commitment to a life of service, faith, and transcendence; to the joy of struggle against the grain of despair and hopelessness.
For the classroom to become a “sacred”and holy place, criticalpedagoguesmust necessarily be involved in the politics of schools and other cultural institutionsthe “terrain of struggle” previously discussed. At the same time, however, this political struggle runs the risk of hopelessness and continual “Catch zyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcbaZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFEDCBA
22” situations if the struggle is not supported by the kind of political and spiritual idealism that Martin Luther King‘s “I Have a Dream” speech expressed more than thirty years ago.26Forteachers the terrain of struggleis more than just the culturally reproductive and culturally productive practices of the everyday lifeworld; teachers require also a transcendental hope, belief, and commitment to the historical, spiritual, and ethical potential of what it means to be human, as well as a belief in the mystery of life that embraces the sacred as a departing point for a sense of the possible.27
TRANSFORMATIVEINTELLECTUAL AND TEACHER AS PROPHET
transformativeintellectual has connoted the teacher as a political agent of social change.28A transformative intellectual’s pedagogical task is to insert democratic values into all facets of teaching and related activities. This implies taking a stand against the predominant market logic of schools, so well critiqued in Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis’s seminal and explicitly advocated by recent national reports on education.”O
Within the criticalpedagogyliterature, the term zyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcbaZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFEDCBA
First, a transformative intellectual will both study and help students to understand the functions of schools and surrounding cultural systems, both past and 25. Ibid., 5
26. See Paul Willis, Learning to Labor [Lexington:D.C. Heath, 1977);Barry Kanpol, “Teacher Work Tasks as Forms of Resistance and Accommodation to StructuralFactors of Schools,” Urban Education 23, no. 2: 173-187;andMartinLuther King’s “IHave aDream” speech, Civil Rights March on Washington, 28 August 1963.
27. See West, Prophetic Reflection, 225.
28. For an excellent essay on transformative intellectuals, see Henry Giroux, Teachers as Intellectuals: A Critical Pedagogy for Practical Learning (Westport, Conn.: Bergin and Garvey, 1988).
29. Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis, Schooling zyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcbaZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFEDCBA in Capitalist America (NewYork: Basic Books, 19761.
6, for a good summary of these reports
30. See Apple, Teachers and Texts, chap. zyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcbaZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFEDCBA
present. This includes understanding of the traditional role of the teacher as socialization agent within the institution of schooling, and how this has affected different race, class, and genderpopulations. Second, the transformative intellectual will act as a change agent in questioning the knowledge, skills, values, and attitudes (thecultural capital) set up by the dominant culture of which the school is a part. Underlying values such as excessive competition, stereotyping, patriarchal control, mechanistic learning, success defined by standardized tests, and a survival of the fittest mentality, all should alert the transformative intellectual to the stultifying and often dehumanizing structure of schools. Third, the transformative intellectual will seek to connect multiple student voices and cultural grammars to broader narratives and discourses that define a pattern of unequal social relation^.^' Fourth, a transformative intellectual will understand the theoretical and political implications of his or her own discourse, connecting theory to practice and inserting politics into all phases of pedagogy. Finally, a transformative intellectual will take a stance on what counts as justice and fair play. That said, a transformative intellectual runs the risk of essentializing certain values at the expense of students exploring and formulating their own values. Thus, the transformative intellectual must try to create a pedagogy of dissent from certain dominant values without essentializing alternative values that can also act as a form of domination.
Giroux and other critical pedagogues are adamant when they speak of the transformative intellectual as a cultural theorist and activist. There is clearly a political agenda for the transformative intellectual, one that transcends the mere classroom as an active area of resistance and transformation, filtering into the dominant culture as well.
I have arguedelsewhere that the educational Left has often fallen prey to a form of nihilism.32Critique for the sake of critique and deconstruction for the sake of deconstruction all too often dominate critical discourses in education. What is so empoweringabout viewing the zyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcbaZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFEDCBA teacher zyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcbaZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFEDCBAas zyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcbaZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFEDCBA
prophet is that the dialectic of critique and energizingbecomes a part of a community of faith committed to altering oppressive social forms. In viewing the teacher as a prophet we can look back to certain biblical figures and narratives as possible social guides to help reconfigure what transformative social agency may look like. For instance, the reality of the exodus from Egypt is the creation of renewed social and cultural possibility, and the formation of a visionary social community. Put differently, Moses dismantles the politics of oppression and exploitation by countering it with a politics of justice and compasion.^^ Simply, the Israelite flight to salvation expressed the belief that the undoing of one’s own oppression had both spiritual dimensions (belief or faith in God and resultant freedom)andcultural dimensions (thecreation of a new community within a politics of justice), both mutually reinforcing. The teacher as prophet follows
31. Peter McLaren, Life in Schools connects cultural grammar to student voice.
32. SeeBarry Kanpol, Teachers Talking Back ond Breaking Bread, forthcoming, as well as Barry Kanpoland Peter McLaren, Critical Multiculturalism, especially the introductory chapter.
33.For more on a politics of justice and compassion, see Walter Brueggemann, TheProphetic Imagination (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, zyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcbaZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFEDCBA 1978).
Moses’lead in creating an energizingpolitics charged with both critique and a sense of possibilities:
The prophet seldom tells a story, but casts events. He rarely sings, but castigates. He does more than translate reality into a poetic key: he is a preacher whose purpose is not self-expression or the “purgatibn of emotion” but communication. His images must not shine, they must burn. The prophet is intent on intensifying responsibility, is impatient of excuse, contemptuous of pretenseand self-pity.His tone, rarelysweetorcaressing,isfrequently consolingand disburdening: his words are often slashing, even horrid- designed to shock rather than to edify.
zyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcbaZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFEDCBA The prophet is concerned with wrenching one’s conscience from the state of suspended animation.“4
The teacher as prophet is not only gut-wrenchingly critical of social surroundings, as is a transformative intellectual, but also passes on a message of transformative hope, enlightenment, joy, love, mercy, and forgiveness that is often missing in critical educational discourse^.^^ Our analysis must be critical; yet it must zyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcbaZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFEDCBA also be laced with prophetic and compassionate implications. Such were the lessons taught to us by Jesus,who besidesbeing a leaderof unbridled faith was also daringand active in challenging the dominant religious traditions of his time, striving to liberate the oppressed. The Biblical lessons of excoriating sin and celebrating joy represent a moving dialect of faith that we can all learn from as teachers.3h
The teacher as prophet will take the lessons learned from religion about cultural transformation andapplythem selectively to the classroom.This doesnot implythat one’s religion must intrude or essentialize moral messages. A new community of faith transcends religiousbarriers.Teachersasprophets can avoidreligious essentialism byplacingit faithfullywithin the dialecticsof criticism andjoy, nurture and care, fortitude and grace. Unlike the transformative intellectual whose tradition is built for the most part on nihilistic criticism with a vision for social transformation, the teacher as prophet adds compassion as a personal emotional reaction to oppressive structures, as well as concern about the numbness of the present social context. The ultimate responsibility of the teacher as prophet is to teach about what it is to be human in a dehumanizing culture. Put in a slightly different form, the teacher as prophet will be responsible for confessing to his or her own limitations, personal weaknesses, and biases in the hope to “celebrate our humanity in all of its aspects -its ugliness as well as its beauty; its animal-like as well as its God-like capacities.
GROUPSOLIDARITY AND CO-WORKERS
The critical educational literature has been explicit about the need to create group solidarity among students at both the university and public school level. Certain studies in education have shown, however, that different forms of group
34. See Abraham Heschel, The Prophets, vol. 2 [NewYork: Harper and Row, 1962)7
35.David Purpel continuously arguesforthis position within a critical tradition. SeePurpel, TheMoral and Spiritua1 Crisis.
36. In her brilliant unpublished dissertation, Carol Zinn argues that faith not only comes from a personal relationship with higher powers such as God, but also is bound within the possibility of confessing institutional sin. Her argument places her in a position of conversion that is at once spiritual as much as cultural. For more on this see CarolZinn, Teaching as a Religious Activity: The Classroom as zyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcbaZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFEDCBAa Place of Darkness and Mystery, unpublished dissertation, University of North Carolina at Greensboro, 1991.
37. See Purpel, “Schooling as a Ritual Performance,” 163.
Critical Pedagogy and Liberation Theology
solidarity areoftenundermined by capitalistic ideologyandrelations of produ~tion.~~ Put differently, forms of rampant individualism, excessive competition, and market logic undermine attempts by groups zyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcbaZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFEDCBAof people to effect social and cultural transformation.
1 have argued elsewhere that group solidarity analyses can be understood differently.That is, struggles to challenge various forms of oppression, alienation, and subordinationcanbe seen aspart of what Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffecall a democratic imaginary and democratic antagonism^.^^ Lacking within the educational Left literature are theoretical insights to understand how social struggle must transcend traditional notions of group solidarity. Clearly, we are not going to get groupsof peopleto strike overissues of teacher and student deskilling and alienation, for example. This is also evident in the Left’s own fragmented political agendas.40 What we need is an understanding that there is little hope for group solidarity over transformative issues in the traditional sense; there are too many theoretical and practical blockades that impinge on such a cause. At best, we can hope for various pockets of resistance and solidarity, operating”as a “democratic imaginary,” as a starting point. What the educational Left can strive for, then, is a renewed language of hope and possibility, understood through a spiritual orientation that regards solidarity efforts by the educational Left as zyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcbaZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFEDCBA co-workers in a sovereign struggle.
Inher book ToWorkand zyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcbaZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFEDCBAtoLove:A Theologyof Creation,Dorothee Soellepoints to the need to overcome the traditional split between “God as the Lord, the subject of creation, and the human being as the object, or the “stuff” of creation made from Soelle argues for a theology that can at once bolster faith in creation while simultaneously viewing creation as a co-production (by God and Human). Put differently, reality is interrelated by events and experiences, for instance, God in Man/Woman. While Soelleargues for the permanence in a higher spirit in God, God has the ability to change and to be revealed in a variety of ways. Such are the arguments, descriptions, and analyses put forth by Lerner as well.42Interesting to note is that while Judeo-Christiannotions of God differ,they arebound inextricably by the notion that humans can be viewed as co-creators with God in an effort to overcomeselfishness and greed;that they can be humbled by experienceand uplifted by grace. Such are the images expressed in both the Old Testament Moses and the New Testament Jesus, each of whom struggled historically, spiritually, and politically with co-workers (Moseswith Aaron and Joshua, Jesuswith his hsciples)in an
38. See Willis, Learning to Labor and Barry Kanpol, ”Multiculturalism and Empathy: Towards a Border Pedagogy of Solidarity,” in Kanpol and McLaren, Critical Multiculturalism, 177-96.
39. See Emesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe, Hegemony and Socialist Strategy (London:Verso, 1985)for more on this; see also Barry Kanpol, Towards a Theory and Practice zyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcbaZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFEDCBA of Teacher Cultural Politics: Continuing the Postmodern Debate (NewJersey: Ablex, 1992).
40. See Kanpol and McLaren, Critical Multiculturalism for more of these arguments, particularly in the introductory chapter.
41. See Dorothee Soelle, To Work and to Love:A Theologyof Creation (Philadelphia:Fortress Press, 1984) for more on her insightful arguments on creation theology.
42. See Michael Lerner, [ewish Renewal, for more on these arguments as they relate to Judaism.
effort to overcome hopelessness, despair, and suffering. Their messages are both spiritual as well as social and cultural critiques of their times. Their ability to love andto workforjustice wasprofoundlyspiritual.Theywerenot merely seekinggroup solidarity. Rather, they were graspingfor an existential reality, avision of the sacred that would bring humans together in a mutually empoweringco-creative existence. It is this co-creativity with and among each other that potentially yields a renewed sense of solidarity.
BORDERCROSSINGSAND BREAKINGBREADAND TALKING
In his brilliant recent book
BACK
Crossings,Giroux outlines how multiple theoretical formations inform the everydaylife world experiences of He argues that a transformative pedagogy is truly revolutionary if it is first able to combine and not close contradictory theoretical frameworks. So, for instance, the best of modernism must intersect with the best of postmodernism, or feminism’s multiple arguments must be viewed within the context of dfferent racial lines for true borders of understanding between differences to exist. A border crosser for Giroux is the theorist or practitioner (transformative intellectual) who is able to understand fluidly and move between theoretical demarcations spirited by an emancipatory praxis. Clearly, for Giroux, a transformative pedagogy must involve border crossingsaspart of a cultural politics. On the even more practical side, some multiculturalists and other educationaltheorists havetaken on Giroux’simageryto depictvarious culturalunderstandingsof howbordersmaybe appliedtothe everyday lifeworld.44
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Giroux has moved progressive educational theory into a more intellectually, politically, and practically astute understanding of “difference.” For years now, critical multiculturalists have spoken and written about difference without seriously engagingsome of the political and theoretical questions that Giroux raises for his readers. A multicultural society, according to Giroux, must intertwine borders of theoretical understandings of the everyday, such as popular culture, with a deconstruction of privileged white middle class culture.45
Often lost here is the question I alluded to earlier: To what end does one deconstruct?Theend, it couldbe argued,isdemocraticinintent.However,the kinds of issuesGirouxdealswith alsohaveto dowith theethical andmoral makeup of each subjectivity. Giroux’s message, which catches us in a dialectic of the present state of structural despair and the hope of a way out from the gloom and doom, lacks an imagery and message through which borders of ethics and the moral could also inform critical educational theorists.
43. For more on theoretical border crossings, see Henry Giroux, Border Crossings {NewYork: Routledge,
45. See Henry Giroux, Disturbing Pleasures: Learning Popular Culture (NewYork Routledge, 1994)for excellent analyses of popular culture. 1992).
44. SeeGordon, ”TheFringe Dwellers” and Fred Yeo, “The Conflicts of Difference in an Inner City School: Experiencing Boundaries in the Ghetto,” in Kanpol and McLaren, Critical Multiculturalism, 59-88.
In their book
Breaking Bread, hooks and West present the imagery of sitting together and having a critical dialogueabout differen~e.~~They come to their readers in a spirit of compassion and solidarity. For hooks and West, testimony is personal and builds upon an individual’s faith and faith of the community:
Testimony is a very hard spirit to convey in a written text zyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcbaZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFEDCBA
it struck me that dialogue was one of the ways where the sense of mutual witness and testimony could be made manifest. I link that sense to regular communion service in the Black church at Yale where we would often stand in a collective circle and sing, “Let Us Break Bread Together on Our Knees,” and the lines in the song which say, “When I Fall on My Knees with My Face to the Rising Sun, Oh LordHave Mercy on Me.”Iliked the combinationof the notion of community which is about sharing and breaking bread together, of dialogue as well as mercy because mercy speaks to the need we have for compassion, acceptance, understanding and empathy.&‘
It is important for hooks and West to inform readers of their tradition as Black, Christian believers in God. For them, breaking bread connotes “serious talk about coming together, sharing, participating, creating bonds of solidarity.. .linking some sense of faith, religious faith, political faith, to the struggle for freedom.’r4R
Breakingbread also brings to mind the image of the Jewish festival of Passover, celebrated by Jews in solidarity throughout the world. In breaking the traditional Passover bread, Jews are reminded that a central message of the holiday is one of freedom,humility, and hope in a God who helped freea nation from slavery. Second, the image of breaking bread takes us back to Jesusin the New Testament.
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As a Jew, he also broke bread with his disciples in a bond of solidarity and a common understanding about freedom, in this case a freedom arising from belief in a savior. While interpretations of this image may differ, a simple and profound message is clear. To break bread is to be humble. To “dialogue across difference” is to concede and understand, to incorporate borders of theoretical knowledge into a common faithful vision of freedom and democracy.4yTo some, this may mean understanding what Paul’s struggle in the New Testament was about -jailed because of his moral and religious beliefs, or Martin Luther King’s ”I have a dream,” or, referring back to Romans 12:2:zyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcbaZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFEDCBA
“And be ye not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind.” All of these images connect spiritual faith to political transformation:
Movingfrom silence into speech isfor the oppressed, the colonized, the exploited,and those who stand and struggle side by side a gesture of defiance that heals, that makes new life and new growthpossible. It is that act of speech, of “talkingback,” that is no mere gesture of empty words, that is the expression of our movement from object to subject -the liberated voice.i0
It seems to me that images of breaking bread and talking back can be used by the educational Left as ways to think about social transformation. Our borders of
46. See bell hooks and Come1West, Breaking Bread (Boston:South End Press, 1991J.
47. Ibid., 1-2.
48. Ibid., 8.
49. For more on the theoretical nature of dialoguing across differences, see Nicholas Burbules and Suzanne Rice, “Dialogue Across Difference: Continuing the Conversation.” Harvard Educational zyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcbaZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFEDCBA Review 61, no. 4 (1991):393-416.
50. See bell hooks, Talking Back: Thinking Feminist, Thinking Black (Boston:South End Press, 1989).
theoretical understanding can be enhanced with a vision of moral and ethical responsibility derived form Judeo-Christianbiblical imagery, despite seeming faith differences.For West, this faith takes the form of honest commitment:
I remain committed to the prophetic Christian Gospel.,.emphasizing the impact of evangelical prophetic Christianity...rooted in the belief that every individual, irrespective of race, class, gender or nationality should have the opportunity of self realization and self fulfillment.s1
Finally, the imageryof breaking bread and talking back has the potential of creating a dialoguethat is guided by a sense of morality and ethics that, as hooks describes, ”takes one’snourishment in the space where you find it,” as guided by borders of faith and politi~s.~~Borders become defined as a space of faith and political responsibility; and our actions, our dialogue, are situated within this space.
As West puts it, “a belief in God that is not to be understood in a non contextual manner. It is understood in relation to a particular context, to specific cir~umstances.”~~
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Critical educatorswho adopt criticalpedagogyfor zyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcbaZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFEDCBA
CONCLUSION:SOCIALTRANSFORMATION AND EPOCHALTRANSITION
social transformationneed to understand that within our multiple theoretical formulations a sovereign of possibility must be sought as a common good if we are to make serious inroads into the dominant culture. I am not suggesting that we abandon multiple theoretical formulations, nor am I saying that all desires, hopes, dreams, and oppressions are totally similar. I am calling for a form of totalizing vision, however, one that can be describedbywhat PeterMcLarencalls an epochal tr~nsition.~~ This transition starts with the postmodern rupture of difference,but within that rupture avision of a faith can transcend theoretical discourses without denyingtheir value. This may lead us toward a higher belief in a spirit that helps to form a community of faith, similar to what Welch describesas epistemological solidarity:
An epistemology of solidarity is partial because of its immersion in a particular historical and cultural milieu. It is self-criticalbecause of the recognition that whilewe areshapedbyparticular histories, there are other communities affected by us both for goodand for ill. Learning from and with those shapedbyotherequallypartial traditions helps avoidsectarianismandtotalitarianism.ss
With the above in mind, for the educational Left to move theoretically and practically to the kind of transformation I am advocating, the dialectic of social transformation and one’s faith will have to be negotiated and renegotiated. They must beintertwined, feedingoff eachother, unified within differenceand similarity, within and among differenttraditions, singingthe same joyous voice of solidarity in hopeandjoy. So,forinstance, I amnot against schoolprayerorevenpersonal (inward) confession or reflection time. Prayerhas the possibility of allowing a spaceforbeing critical of one’s own material life.56To take dogmatically the stance that “we
1. See West and hooks, Breaking Bread, 22.
52. Ibid., 91.
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53. Ibid., zyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcbaZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFEDCBA 9.
55. Welch, A Feminist Ethic of Risk, 138.
54. SeePeter McLaren,”Schoolingthe PostmodernBody: CriticalPedagogyand the Politics of Enfleshment,” [ournal zyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcbaZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFEDCBAof Education 170, no. 3 [1989J:53-83.
56. At least this is the effect it has on me!
shouldn’t have school prayer” is to deny an important kind of personal “voice.” School prayer makes sense if contemplation and interpersonal faith are used to understand one’s life experiences, be they critical or
In this essay, I have tried to create theoretical borders between the language of the educational Left and some theological visions. This border crossing necessarily means building bridges of faith around similarities and differences as well as instilling ethics into all phases of our theoretical discourse. Perhaps Kozol best summarizes how our politics may be fused with spirituality when he calls for a new sense of the possible within a radically spiritual attitude.58It is here that critical pedagogy and liberation theology have much to offer the educational Left in its transformative agenda,an agenda,asPurpel describes,“whosesenseof education can be seen to be critical, in that its purpose is to help us to see, hear and experience the world more completely, and with more under~tanding.”~~
57. In my mind the struggle over school prayer is one that the Left has to zyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcbaZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFEDCBAuse to its advantage. How we use the common and “affective” languagethat mobilizes popular opinion is something the Left has to dealwith in order to achieve its political and cultural cause. For me, and particularly my students, the language of the religious right canbe useful if it is redefinedto reflect different andhopefully more critical andvisionary spiritual possibilities.
59. Purpel, A Moral and Spiritual Crisis, 126
58. See Kovel, zyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcbaZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFEDCBA History zyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcbaZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFEDCBA and Spirituality.