YOUR
COMMENTSIn
the post-Trump era, the politics of historical amnesia, disappearance
and disposability continue to thrive. Trump may have lost the
election in 2020, but his influence is everywhere, and one consequence
is that public values are continually denigrated and undermined
by the politicians who slavishly endorse his malignant politics
and authoritarian worldview. The ghosts of a fascist past are
with us once again and can no longer be ignored. The ghosts
of a fascist past are with us once again and can no longer be
ignored. Such fascist passions increasingly less difficult to
determine, slowly reveal the most monstrous, brutal, and devastating
features and effects.
The violent traces
of the past tear into the present, mapping the accumulation
of disasters which layer history. History is under attack
and is no longer is valued for the lessons to be learned about
a past wrought with both the burdens of human misery and the
collective courage of mass resistance. Dangerous memories
at the heart of a historical consciousness that extend from
the extermination of native Americans and the horrors of slavery
to the ravages of unchecked capitalism, the ongoing wars on
undocumented immigrants, and the police violence disproportionately
aimed at Black people-- increasingly disappear from those
sites that are guardians of historical memory—schools,
libraries, social media- particularly under the policies of
the memory police who lead the Republican Party. Pedagogy
of Resistance argues that it is not enough for historical
memory to be merely stated or acknowledged. It needs to be
imaginative and equipped with a restive defiance in the face
of those forces that continue to annihilate humanity while
undermining the collective courage needed to reveal the truth,
question authority, and fight for social, racial and economic
justice.
Pedagogy of Resistance
draws upon a vast number of resources to make clear that cultural
politics is increasingly marked by a pedagogy of disappearance
waged through book burnings, unchecked censorship, the elevation
of hate over shared compassion, and a growing violence waged
against the oppositional press. The politics of disappearance
with its collapse of collective conscience is a prison with
and without cells; it is the pit where the dead bodies of
journalists and poets are buried; books are destroyed or erased;
it is terror exhibited by the police who come in the night
to arrest dissidents; it is the deep grammar of a social system
at war with democracy.
Yet, the ghosts
of resistance are far from absent. They wait and work to make
memory come alive. Despair does more than destroy dreams,
it also holds the promise of a revolution in shared values,
consciousness, the meaning of social agency, and the promise
of mass resistance. This is evident by the fact that a pedagogy
of resistance has emerged, particularly among young people,
those considered disposable, and artists who fight against
learned helplessness in order to hold power accountable and
to give voice to the dead whose presence is a reminder that
one can never look away in the face of barbarism. Such resistance
now moves in the menacing shadows of the present and serve
as an early warning system for illuminating the darkest moments
of history. Humankind is in the midst of a crisis in which
it is crucial for individuals to critically engage and resist
the pandemics of injustice that undermine the capacities for
critical thought, dialectical thinking, and the desire for
a democratic alternative to neoliberal capitalism.
At the core of
the Pedagogy of Resistance is the reminder that education
is central to politics and that no democracy can exist without
informed citizens. It is a call for those who believe that
history is open and that it is necessary for people to think
otherwise to act otherwise, especially if we want to imagine
and bring into being alternative democratic futures and horizons
of possibility. At stake here is the need to develop a vision
infused with a mix of justice, hope, and struggle, a task
in the age of pandemics that has never been more important
than it is today. Moreover, in the face of the emerging tyranny
and fascist politics that are spreading across the globe,
it is time to merge a sense of moral outrage with a sense
of civic courage and collective action. At the very least,
education is a central part of politics because it provides
the foundation for those of us who believe that democracy
is a site of struggle, which can only be encountered through
an awareness of both its fragility and necessity.
Pivotal to this
struggle is the necessity to rethink and relearn the role
that critical education and civic literacy have and can play
in producing a collective anti-capitalist consciousness. A
central theme in Pedagogy of Resistance is that there is no
democracy without an educated public and there is no educated
public without the support and existence of institutions that
define education as a public good, and as a crucial public
sphere. Educators, artists, intellectuals, and other cultural
workers have a moral and political responsibility to put into
place those pedagogical sites and practices that enable the
critical agents and social movements willing to refuse to
equate capitalism and democracy and uphold the conviction
that the problems of ecological destruction, mass poverty,
militarism, systemic racism, staggering economic inequality,
the carceral state, and a host of other social problems cannot
be solved by leaving capitalism in place. Education in its
multiple sites and expressions once again must do justice
to democracy and the conditions that make it possible by writing
the future in the language of struggle, hope, equality, compassion,
and the fundamental narratives of freedom and equality.
