Major+Response+Paper+1

Response Paper 1 for Major Exam in Composition History: The Political, The Pedagogical
My reading this week has emphasized the interconnectedness of all facets of life (the political is inherently tied to the cultural, is inherently tied to the economic, is inherently tied to the educational, is inherently tied to the family structure, etc). While on one hand this interconnectedness seems to be key to actually understanding the systems at play, it also makes these works come across as pessimistic and daunting. Each of them stressed, at one point or another, that no real change can happen until a complete systems change is enacted (reform efforts are not good enough until we overthrow capitalism, certain kinds of protests are not good enough because it doesn’t attack patriarchy at the root of everything, etc.) Like the paradigm shift model, these works suggest that systems do not overlap, but rather new systems are only formed in wake of the destruction of the old system. While Freire’s work is inspirational, his insistence that liberation cannot be developed or implemented by the oppressors, but only by the oppressed, denies any kind of intersectionality, denies the types of complaints manifested in the feminist histories that the Left was consistently oppressing even as it worked toward freedom. However, I’m left wondering how one goes about organizing and working toward the multiplicity of issues simultaneously, how we avoid the problems inherent in privileging one oppression over another, or subsuming one into the other (and then in essence ignoring it). And wondering if, growing out of a Marxist tradition, this is even possible?  Also, the idea of consciousness is prominent in all of these works, although this idea has also been subject to strong critique. The idea of creating a class consciousness, a consciousness of the oppression present within our everyday lives, most often through dialogue. It is interesting to see the connections between Freire’s work and the feminist consciousness raising work, and makes me wonder what exactly the role of consciousness raising is. In order to “raise” a consciousness, we are already starting out with hierarchies. However, it is also not an option to ignore the consciousness phase—one cannot fight injustices unless they are aware of the injustices. Freire suggests that it is reality that must be changed rather than other people, but as a rhetorician who believes that people and the discourses they perpetuate are the creators of reality, it is difficult to separate the two. And, when it comes to pedagogy at least, it seems that separating the two has always neutralized the pedagogy to a point of ineffectiveness. And I’m unsure how raising consciousness is not the same as transforming people. It seems to me that he is taking issue less with the act of raising consciousness, but the process or methodology through which consciousness is raised.  Perhaps this is why I identify so strongly with Scott’s work—it seems (thus far) to be the only text that suggests that the consciousness and possibilities for resistance are already there, already available, but unable to be seen outside the discourse community. However, these resistances are not often part of system changing, but rather they are intended for survival. Scott suggests that it is through charisma and an (often) unintentional first act of open defiance that moves resistance from hidden to open discourse. This makes me question the role of the teacher as liberator and the role of consciousness raising within the liberatory or critical pedagogy model.

Critique grows out of historical analysis.  For Marx and his followers, capitalism is everything. For feminism, capital is yet another system used to overshadow women’s role in society even though the subordination of women can be justified through an economic lens in terms of women’s labor.

Everyone seems to be trying to work from a unifed lens or unified theory

Even though all of the readings thus far have pushed against this idea of fatalism, most of them still seem to carry a sense of fatalism with them, or at least a limiting sense of how things can happen. Freire suggests that it is only the oppressed who can develop or implement change. Bowles and Gintis argue that real educational reform will have no meaning until we have overthrown the capitalist system. There are so many limits put on reform/change that it is essentially detailed as impossible to happen without a complete change to the system, and certainly there is little mention of methods for enacting this change. I suppose because these are “theorists,” rather than polemics. Polemic writers will tell us how to effect the revolution, but it is still always idealized.

What role does resistance play in progressive pedagogy… define resistance…