The Radical Pedagogies of Socrates and Freire

Ancient Rhetoric/Radical Praxis

Stephen Brown

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2011
• Print ISBN: 9781138097827
• eBook ISBN: 9781136596599
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Education General
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

Situating contemporary critical praxis at the intersection of the social, the political, and the rhetorical, this book is a provocative inquiry into the teaching philosophies of Plato's Socrates and Paulo Freire that has profound implications for contemporary education. Brown not only sheds new light on the surprising and significant points of intersection between ancient rhetoric and radical praxis as embodied in the teaching philosophies of Socrates and Freire, using the philosophy of each to illumine the teaching of the other, but uses this analysis to lead contemporary education in a bold new direction, articulating a vision for a neo-humanist pragmatism. The book draws on the post-Freudian theories of Jacques Derrida, Peter Brooks, and Otto Rank, as well as on the neo-pragmatism of Cornell West to craft a new radical pedagogy configured to the realities of "post flash-crash" America. In the process, it discovers a space for a much broader application of Freire's teaching philosophy than previous works, moving beyond a narrow focus on "liberatory" pedagogy or "teaching resistance," toward a neo-humanist pragmatism emphasizing interactive learning, problem-posing analysis, and civic engagement. Brown crafts a social-epistemic praxis that fuses the pedagogies of Freire and Socrates, joining the analytical, the ethical, and the political as part of an inquiry and intervention into the real, the good, and the possible that poses problematic aspects of contemporary reality in a search for the program content of a Pedagogy of Social Change.

1 The Radical Critique of Radical Pedagogy

The Trial of Plato and Freire

THE CRITIQUE OF ANCIENT RHETORIC

A recent body of criticism has brought radical pedagogy under radical attack, calling into question its “feasibility,” methodology, ethics, even its relevance to contemporary education, and to writing instruction in particular. This contemporary critique of radical pedagogy, to the extent it calls into question its relevance, feasibility, and indeed its viability, replicates the contemporary critique of ancient rhetoric. Therefore, any polemic intent on demonstrating the efficacy of Socratic inquiry and/or Freirean praxis, either separately or conjoined, must first demonstrate its efficacy in the face of this radical renunciation of radical pedagogy. Borrowing a trope from Plato’s Phaedrus and Apology, I want to restage this “trial” of radical pedagogy, and of Plato and Freire in particular, to gain, if not their acquittal, at least a more appreciative “reading” of their radical pedagogies. Therefore, I offer this “trial” of Plato and Freire by way of “appealing’ to the “verdicts” of criticism, which are fatally flawed by their reductive representations of radical pedagogy, and of Freirean praxis in particular. I will begin with the oldest defendant.

In the Apology, Socrates performs his critical elenchus within the context of his trial, in defense of a life dedicated to philosophic eros. He uses his defense to put his accusers, and sophistry in general, on trial. In the Phaedrus, Plato restages this trial of sophistry, reversing the adversarial roles: positing Socrates as the prosecutor and Lysias as the sophistic defendant, who is “tried” in absentia, as Socrates claims he was in the court of public opinion in the run-up to his trial, whose “first accusers” he must confront in absentia. I want to similarly confront the radical critique of radical pedagogy within the context of a figurative trial, with two defendants: Plato and Freire, each of whom is a voice who speaks, metonymically, for the broader discourse of radical pedagogy.

The relevance of Plato’s pedagogical philosophy, mouthed through the construct of Socrates, has come under radical attack by postmodern theorists, who assert his view of knowledge and knowledge-making is incompatible with theories that posit the social construction of knowledge. Perhaps the most problematic critical crux in the entire Platonic canon is Plato’s oppressive construct of an ultimate truth, filtered through Socrates: a truth that is always and already an a priori, transcendent signified—a truth that “comes before” language, that exists independent of the knowing subject. In Chapter 7, “Plato and the Tyranny of the Transcendent,” I will address this criticism, opening a critical space between Plato and Plato’s Socrates that calls this claim of an “a priori” logos into question. I will develop this counter-critique within the context of Plato’s critique of writing, and in an effort to complicate Derrida’s “reading” of Plato’s assault on writing.

It is not merely Plato’s assumption of an Intelligence that always and already “comes before” that has come under radical attack by postmodern theorists, but the reliance of classical rhetoric on superficial, antiquated forms whose lack of rhetorical complexity undermines their relevance to contemporary writing instruction. This claim suffers from the same reductive analysis as those who critique Freirean praxis: ironic in a criticism that recants classical rhetoric for its reductive forms. In Chapters 4, 5, and 6, I hope to unveil the rhetorical complexity of Socratic inquiry, by way of refuting this criticism.

At the extreme end of this radical critique of classical rhetoric are the assertions of Knoblauch and Brannon, who caution that “teachers of composition should be wary of blending the epistemologies of ancient and modern rhetoric” (17), adding that “the classical genres, as well as their modern successors, really are superficial shapes” (31), and particularly “those related to methods of argument,” with their reductive emphasis on “invention,” “arrangement,” and “style,” which have “haunted Western discourse theory, solidifying the distinction between thought and language”(34). In offering a corrective view to Knoblauch and Brannon’s reductive analysis, I will argue that the emphasis on improvised argument, dialectics, critical thinking, analysis, civic rhetoric, as well as the goals, methods, and assumptions governing the relation between thought and language, teacher and student, education and politics that define Socrates’ radical praxis, denote that educative model as an early precursor of social-epistemic pedagogy: a (pre)cursive precursor, if you will. The useful re-readings of classical rhetoric by Jacques Derrida, Jasper Neel, Susan Jarratt, and Cheryl Glenn have likewise exposed its inherent contradictions, its political and patriarchal biases, and its anti-democratic and misogynistic tendencies.

THE CRITIQUE OF RADICAL PEDAGOGY

Radical pedagogy, and Freire’s liberatory praxis in particular, has been under radical attack for over a decade. Much of this criticism has focused almost exclusively on the “revolutionary,” “resistant,” “emancipatory,” or “liberatory” aspects of Freire’s praxis, while de-emphasizing or ignoring altogether equally significant aspects of his pedagogy: dialogic learning, problem-posing analysis, and civic engagement. Joe Hardin’s Opening Spaces provides (at least to my knowledge) the most cogent and significant review of the criticism of radical pedagogy: one that continues to exert a deep influence on the field of composition studies. At the same time, Hardin’s landmark analysis and polemic of critical pedagogy proves fertile ground for re-theorizing and re-envisioning critical praxis in a post “flash-crash” America—for “opening spaces” that are new, humanist, pragmatic, and inventive. Though different from the “space” Hardin defends, these new sites of critical pedagogy are enabled by that space, whose articulation was a necessary precondition for the genesis of these radically new pedagogical sites.

Hardin commences his review of the critique of radical pedagogy by observing that “there are clearly those who worry that critical pedagogy, and especially the teaching of resistance, is a futile or ethically suspect activity that should not be a primary concern of the composition classroom” (3). As opposed to a misplaced focus on resisting problematic realities to transform them, these critics assert that “compositionists should concern themselves exclusively with supporting students with the skills necessary to succeed in the academy and in the current economy …” (3). Yet, this criticism of the goals and content of radical pedagogy presumes a false, either-or binary between these two pedagogical approaches, as if one can only be taught at the exclusion of the other: as if a focus on analyzing to transform problematic realities cannot also foster a skill-set that facilitates academic and/or economic success.

Richard Miller succinctly describes perhaps the most common criticism of Freire: one that calls into question the relevance of a pedagogy of revolution in a post-colonial setting to American classrooms, “whose students do not need to be liberated because they are not oppressed, at least not in ways that Freire’s subjects were oppressed” (qtd. in Hardin 100). Miller continues his summary of this critique:

[Freire’s] work was with illiterate peasants who were struggling to combat their government’s oppressive policies.… It would be foolish to equate the challenges Freire has confronted in the field … with the challenges we face teaching composition in the academy: we teach those who have already found their way into the system, those who wish … to gain access to the material benefits that higher education is said to promise. (18, qtd. in Hardin 101, my emphasis)

Ironically, in attempting to underscore the irrelevance of Freirean praxis to contemporary American education, Miller unwittingly underscores its relevance, under the sign of “access.” It is the denial of access to increasing numbers of citizens in post “flash-crash” America to the benefits of the American materialist dream, whether we are talking about access to affordable health care, education, jobs, or political power, that reinforces the enduring relevance of Freire’s teaching to contemporary American education, insofar as it was nothing if not a pedagogy of access. American students, like its citizenry in general, are being systematically excluded from access to the traditional material benefits of the American dream, as a result of the effects of a class war accelerated by the “flash crash” of 2008, that has seen millions lose their jobs, with the result that access to higher education is being denied to countless numbers of students whose parents can no longer afford to send them to college, as well as by the increased tuitions necessitated by the financial collapse and the gutting of academic budgets by the state, by leaders who are playing politics with our children’s future. Diminished access to higher education will only further limit access to the job market, further polarizing the realities of haves and have-nots: realities which the latter are being asked by the former to accept as “the new normal.” This systematic and willful exclusion of the middle and lower classes from access to the American materialist dream by an increasingly politicized upper class further underscores the relevance of Freirean praxis, of its critique of power, of its enabling analysis, and finally of a critical literacy that serves, not the interest of the privileged few, but the common good.

The more Americans are denied access to the American materialist dream and its benefits, the more relevant Freirean praxis becomes, for it is nothing if not a pedagogy of access: to education, jobs, health, wealth, and power. What does it matter whether access is denied to citizens as a result of colonial domination or corporate greed; they are equally disenfranchised and dispossessed: of their jobs and entitlements, their dreams and health—of an affordable education and gainful employment—all as part of the “new normal” that caters to the interests of the few at the expense of the many. These new realities, instead of antiquating, further authenticate, Freirean praxis.

If formerly, conditions underscored the disparity between Brazil and America regarding access to the American materialist dream, today’s historic, material, and political conditions reinforce the growing alliteration of diminished access across cultural, political, and geographic borders. Analysis of the problematic realities that deny access to health and wealth, education and employment, to say nothing of political power, may serve as a springboard toward civic engagement with those problematic realities, as part of a twofold process for transforming those realities. Criticisms of Freirean praxis that may have been relevant ten years ago are far less cogent today, due to the effects of class warfare, which have narrowed the reality gap between colonial Brazil and corporatist America.

Other critics, focusing less on the goals and content and more on the methodology of Freirean praxis, cite the uncritical hypocrisy of teachers who purport to educate in solidarity with the Other when they “are actually already ‘junior members’ of the managerial class” (101). Having questioned the relevance of Freirean praxis to American schools, these critics interrogate the ethics of imposing a teacher’s radical agenda of resistance on students’ assimilationist ambitions relative to the American materialist dream. Radical pedagogues, these critics assert, “do a disservice to these students by undermining their legitimate goals” (100). As Hardin observes, “critics have charged that this is an elitist attitude that privileges the world view of the teacher [and stereotypes] the student as a naïve or misled innocent.” Such a critical pedagogy is predicated on the circulation of negative stereotypes of the untutored student, who “labor[s] under a veil of ideology that can only be lifted by the interposition of a ‘liberatory’ pedagogy” (101). The student’s “false consciousness” is posited in sharp contrast to the teacher’s “authentic consciousness,” thus reinscribing a hierarchical power dynamic that radical pedagogy purports to critique (R. Miller 19, qtd. in Hardin 101).

Continuing this ethical assault, other critics argue that radical pedagogy substitutes one form of ideological indoctrination for another, subsuming the student’s voice and world view in the teacher’s, reinscribing the practices of the pedagogies it putatively critiques. Susan Miller, for example, “worries that such practice infantilizes students, assuming their cultural naiveté, and that critical pedagogy, no matter how well-intentioned, may unfairly endorse the teacher’s or institutions ideological perspective” (qtd. in Hardin 3). In “Rescuing the Subject,” Miller calls into question the tendency of radical pedagogy to “teach a universal moral sense … to normalize and covertly coerce conscience” and to “install a universal vision of ‘democratic’ subjectivity” (498).

Criticism of Freire’s “liberatory” praxis is thus grounded in a critique of a seemingly fatal contradiction at the heart of his radical praxis—and by implication of all radical pedagogy: that it merely reinscribes a “banking model” of education-as-inculcation, unwittingly reinforcing the hierarchical power dynamics it purports to resist: in which an ideology of resistance is proselytized in lieu of an ideology of domination, in which the student is “inculcated” with the political world view of the practitioner. However, this argument is itself based on a flawed, if not fatal, assumption: that education is not always and already an act of “inculcation.” Education always inculcates. Without inculcation, there is no education. All teaching inculcates, from the advent of Socrates’ elenchus in the fourth century BC to the liberatory pedagogy of Freire. Webster’s Dictionary defines “inculcate” as “to teach” (379). Under “teaching,” Roget’s Thesaurus includes the following verbs: “instruct, edify … inculcate” (564). This calls into question the assumption that “inculcation” is somehow distinct from “teaching.” Teaching is always and already “inculcation.”

The critical question is not whether teaching “inculcates,” but whether such inculcation is ethical. Given the inescapably political nature of all pedagogy, pedagogical ethics is only determined by the ends it serves: domination or freedom. To insist that pedagogy be apolitical is to deny its inherently political nature.

Given the impractical imperatives to act beyond the classroom in order to intervene upon or transform problematic realities, radical practitioners run the risk of generating nothing more than a passive awareness. In Self-Consuming Artifacts, Stanley Fish underscores the dangerous risks that the impractical imperatives of “action” and “resistance” pose to radical pedagogy, if it offers nothing more than the “lure of political hope,” or ends by becoming nothing more than a “dangerous new ‘modification’ to the subject of English studies” (101, qtd. in Hardin 5). Byron Hawk advances another criticism of a radical pedagogy that fails to deliver on its promise of liberatory change: “students can come to believe that they cannot change the world to correspond to their desire. In practice [this] has the potential to transform itself into its opposite—cynicism” (79). But even this failure and this cynicism are enabling if they do nothing more than enable the student through analysis of discourse and rhetoric to defend himself or herself from the manipulative effects of it, to make a conscious choice relative to the affective power of rhetoric. This is precisely the problem addressed by Socrates’ elenchus and the ameliorative effect of the critical consciousness it developed. Yes, failure to alter material conditions may foster cynicism, but it is a radically different kind of cynicism from that engendered by an paralyzing ignorance, insofar as the subject may be impotent with respect to the world, but is no longer impotent before the Word, and therefore less likely to have his or her behavior in the world determined by a Word that serves the interests of domination.

It is a critical as opposed to an uncritical cynicism, which leverages a liberatory space and a measure of agency between the knowing subject and the state-sanctioned Word that would gain his compliance, manipulate her response, or construct and control the subject through a rhetoric of opaque deceptions. Critical analysis, even sans the actions that authenticate it, is an edifying end in itself, is always and already a form of action, insofar as it alters the relation between the Self and the Word—it arms a self that has stood unarmed before a Word and a World that serve, not its own interests, but the interests of domination. These critics problematize what they see as the tendency of “teacher or institutional concerns [to] overwhelm student autonomy in an attempt to create a liberated subject” (R. Miller, qtd. in Hardin 9). The effect of creating a “liberated subject,” however, has prompted critics to dwell on this aspect of Freirean praxis, calling into question the tendency of “teacher or institutional concerns [to] overwhelm student autonomy,” in the process blinding these critics to the edifying aspects of Freire’s emphasis on dialogic learning, problem-posing analysis, and civic engagement.

More recently, Freire has come under radical attack at a much more fundamental level, by critics who call into question the relevance of Freirean praxis to a pedagogy that has purportedly moved beyond its antiquated notions. While some critics assert Freire’s praxis reinscribes the dogmatic pedagogies it purports to resist, others contend it is either irrelevant to American classrooms by virtue of its emphasis on revolution and resistance or an antiquated discourse that is no longer discussed. This last criticism undercuts its own credibility by virtue of its hyperbolic claims. This criticism is easily dispelled by a selective search of the MLA International Bibliography or JSTOR. A key word search of these databases using “Paulo Freire” turned up 50+ recent sources (2006–2010), as evidenced by the following selective sample:

“Teaching Freire and CUNY Open Admissions,” by Kristen Gallagher. Radical Teacher: A Socialist, Feminist, and Anti-Racist Journal on the Theory and Practice of Teaching 2010 Spring 87: 55–67.

“Critical Pedagogy, Democracy, and Capitalism: Education Without Enemies or Borders,” by Nick Stevenson. Review of Education/Pedagogy/Cultural Studies 2010 Jan–Mar 32.1: 66–92.

“Freire’s Bottom-Up Bridge to Student-Centered-ness: A Rebuttal.…” by Kashani A. Salouri. Asian ESL Journal 2009 May 5.1: 107–113.

Subject to Reading: Literacy and Belief in the Work of Lacan and Freire, by Eugene Henry Klerk. Newcastle Upon Tyne, England: Cambridge Scholars, 2009.

“Understanding Critical Pedagogy & Its Impact on the Construction of Knowledge,” by Janette Zygamantas. Pedagogica 2009 23: 63–78.

ESL Education in Taiwan: An Approach Applying Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy … Cultural Contexts, by John Chang. 2008 Jan DAI. 68.7: 2918.

“The Future of the Past: Reflections on the Present State of Empire and Pedagogy,” by Peter McClaren in Critical Pedagogy: Where Are We Now? New York: Peter Lang, 2007: 289–315.

“Liberation Theology and Liberatory Pedagogies: Renaming the Dialogue,” by Shari J. Steinberg. College English 2006 Jan 68.3: 271–290.

These recent works evidence the enduring relevance of Freire across disciplines and cultural boundaries: not only in Rhetoric/Composition Studies, but across disciplines in English as a Second Language (ESL), African Studies, Philosophy, Anthropology, and Theater Arts; not only in America, but in Taiwan, Africa, and South America; not only with major scholars (Peter McLaren) and to major theorists (Lacan), but as evidenced by discussions of his praxis in tier-one (College English) and tier-t...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Halftitle
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction: Socrates and Freire: The Origins of a Genealogy
• 1. The Radical Critique of Radical Pedagogy: The Trial of Plato and Freire
• 2. The World, the Word, and the Wound: A Genealogy of Origins
• 3. A Radical Genealogy: Mapping Goals and Assumptions
• 4. The Dawn of Analysis: The Method of His Madness
• 5. The Signifying Hood: The Dialectics of Recantation
• 6. The Error of His Ways: Getting It Wrong to Get It Write
• 7. Plato and the Tyranny of the Transcendent: A Radical Re-Reading
• 8. Love in a Time of War: The Ethos of Eros
• 9. Radical Pedagogy Reconfigured: Toward a Neo-Humanist Pragmatism
• Conclusion: Ancient Rhetoric/Radical Praxis: The Personal, the Political, and the Rhetorical
• Works Cited
• Index