The New Henry Giroux Reader

The Role of the Public Intellectual in a Time of Tyranny

Henry A. Giroux, Jennifer A. Sandlin, Jake Burdick

• Publisher: Myers Education Press
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9781975500757, 9781975500740
• eBook ISBN: 9781975500771
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education Curricula

The New Henry Giroux Reader presents Henry Giroux's evolving body of work. The book articulates a crucial shift in his analyses after the September 11th, 2001 terrorist attack, when his writing took on more expansive articulations of power, politics, and pedagogy that addressed education and culture in forms that could no longer be contained via isolated reviews of media, schooling, or pedagogical practice. Instead, Giroux locates these discourses as a constellation of neoliberal influences on cultural practices, with education as the engine of their reproduction and their cessation.

The New Henry Giroux Reader also takes up Giroux's proclivity for using metaphors articulating death as the inevitable effect of neoliberalism and its invasion of cultural policy. Zombies, entropy, and violence permeate his work, coalescing around the central notion that market ideologies are anathema to human life. His early pieces signal an unnatural state of affairs seeping through the fabric of social life, and his work in cultural studies and public pedagogy signals the escalation of this unease across educative spaces. The next sections take up the fallout of 9/11 as an eruption of these horrific practices into all facets of human life, within traditional understandings of education and culture's broader pedagogical imperatives. The book concludes with Giroux's writings on education's vitalist capacity, demonstrating an unerring capacity for hope in the face of abject horror.

Perfect for courses such as: History and Philosophy of Education, Political and Social Foundations of Education, Policy Issues in American Education, African American Education, Social Justice Research in Education, Marginality and the Politics of Resistance, Equity and Anti-Oppression, Cultural Studies and Public Pedagogy.

SECTION V

RADICALIZING
HOPE

Public Intellectualism,
The Vitalism of Education,
and the Promise of Democracy

CHAPTER 13

Democracy, Freedom, and Justice after September 11th

Rethinking the Role of Educators and the Politics of Schooling

2002

This is a difficult time in American history. The tragic and horrific terrorist acts of September 11 suggest a traumatic and decisive turning point in the history of the United States. Some commentators have compared it to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Others suggest that the history of the twenty-first century will be defined against the cataclysmic political, economic, and legal changes inaugurated by the monstrous events of September 11. Similarly, many people are now aware that, for better or worse, the United States is part of a globalized system, the effects of which cannot be completely controlled.¹ There is also a newfound sense of collective unity organized not only around flag-waving displays of patriotism but also around collective fears and an ongoing militarization of visual culture and public space.

As President Bush declared that the United States is at war, the major television networks capitalized on this militarized notion of patriotism, repeatedly framing their news programs against tag lines such as “America at War,” “America Strikes Back,” or “America Recovers.” Fox News Network delivered a fever-pitch bellicosity that informed much of its ongoing commentaries and reactions to the terrorist bombings, framed nightly against its widely recognized image, “America United.” A majority of both the op-ed commentaries in the dominant media and the television commentaries appearing on the major networks, such as ABC, NBC, and CBS, proclaimed their support for government and military action, while giving relatively little exposure to dissenting positions.² Many news commentators and journalists in the dominant press have taken up the events of September 11 within the context of World War II, invoking daily the symbols of revenge, retaliation, and war. Against an endless onslaught of images of U.S. jets bombing Afghanistan, amply supplied by the Defense Department, the dominant media connects the war abroad with the domestic struggle at home by presenting numerous stories about the endless ways in which potential terrorists might use nuclear weapons, poison the food supply, or unleash biochemical agents on the American population. The increased fear and insecurity created by such stories simultaneously served to legitimize a host of antidemocratic practices at home, including “the beginnings of a concerted attack on civil liberties, freedom of expression, and freedom of the press,”³ and a growing sentiment on the part of the American public that people who suggest that terrorism should be analyzed, in part, within the context of American foreign policy should not be allowed “to teach in the public schools, work in the government, and even make a speech at a college.”⁴ Against this militarization of public discourse, Hollywood and television producers provide both Spielberg-type patriotic spectacles, such as the made-for-television HBO dramatic series, Band of Brothers, and Hollywood’s uncritical homage to the military in films such as Behind Enemy Lines, Black Hawk Down, and Spy Games. All of these narratives offer romanticized images of military valor and a hyper-masculine, if not over-the-top, patriotic portrayal of war and violence—while hoping to capitalize on the current infatuation with the military experience by raking in big box office receipts.

In this article I illustrate the many ways in which life in post-September 11 America is both a rupture from some of the antigovernment politics that dominated before these tragic events and an uncanny continuity from the pre-September 11 worship of global capitalism and the virtual abandonment of any effort to create greater equality. In showing both these ruptures and continuities, I hope to help educators contemplate the role that public schools might play in facilitating an alternative discourse grounded in a critique of militarism, consumerism, and racism. Such an alternative discourse would redefine democracy as something separate and distinct from the hyper-individualized market-based relations of capitalism and the retrograde appeal to jingoistic patriotism.

In other words, before the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, popular perceptions of politics and government were that they were either corrupt or irrelevant. It now appears that the government, especially the military and law enforcement, is a defining feature of American life, both pressing and despairing at the same time.⁵ Still, as significant as September 11 might be as a moment of rupture, it is imperative to look at the crucial continuities that either have remained the same or have escalated since the attacks. For instance, prior to September 11^th, there was a growing concern with the buildup in racial profiling, the criminalization of social policies, the growth of the prison-industrial complex and multilayered systems of social control and surveillance,⁶ and the ongoing attacks by the police against people of color.⁷ These trends seemed disturbing before the events of September 11^th, but now they have the cloak of official legitimacy, buttressed by the sense of insecurity and fear that, in part, mobilizes the call for patriotism and national security. For instance, little has been reported in the dominant media about the attacks and violence waged against people perceived as Middle Eastern. As Mike Davis observes,

The big city dailies and news networks have shown patriotic concern for the US image abroad by downplaying what otherwise might have been recognized as the good old boy equivalent of Kristallnacht. Yet even the fragmentary statistics are chilling. In this six weeks after 11 September, civil rights groups estimate that there were at least six murders and one thousand serious assaults committed against people perceived as “Arab” or “Muslim” including several hundred attacks on Sikhs.⁸

While there has been some resistance in both the media and among diverse groups to the accelerated practice of racial profiling, the American public largely supports the indefinite detention by federal authorities of over 11,000 immigrants, only four of whom, according to Davis, have direct links to terrorist organizations.⁹

Already imperiled before the aftershocks of the terrorists attacks, democracy appears even more fragile in this time of crisis as new antiterrorist laws have been passed that make it easier to undermine those basic civil liberties that protect individuals against invasive and potentially repressive government actions. Against a government and media induced culture of fear, “Federal law enforcement is being restructured so that the FBI can permanently focus on the War against Terrorism—meaning that it will largely become an elite immigration police—while a mysterious new Pentagon entity, the Homeland Defense Command, will presumably adopt the Mexican border as a principal battlefield.”¹⁰ A further threat to democracy can be found in the recently passed USA Patriot Act of 2001. This legislation increases law enforcement’s power to conduct surveillance, never-disclosed wiretaps, and secret searches and detain immigrants indefinitely, and it authorizes the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to resume spying on U.S. citizens. The bill also authorizes secret immigration trials, unreviewable military tribunals, and the monitoring of attorney-client conversations. Not only does the bill introduce a broadly defined crime of “domestic terrorism,” it also allows people to be interned and tried on the basis of secret evidence. Many conservatives and liberals view these laws as both a violation of the Constitution and a threat to some of the most basic freedoms endemic to a democratic state. For instance, conservative columnist William Safire has referred to the military tribunals as “kangaroo courts,” and David Cole, a progressive lawyer, has argued that the Patriot Act “imposes guilt by association on immigrants … and resurrects the philosophy of McCarthyism, simply substituting ‘terrorist’ for ‘communist.’” He also argues that “the military tribunals eliminate virtually every procedural check designed to protect the innocent and accurately identity the guilty.”¹¹

The notion of what constitutes a just society is in flux, betrayed in part by the legacy and language of a commercial culture that collapses the imperatives of a market economy and the demands of a democratic society, and a present that makes humanitarian and political goals a footnote to military goals.¹² Instead of seeing the current crisis as a break from the past, it is crucial for educators and others to begin to understand how the past might be useful in addressing what it means to live in a democracy in the aftermath of September 11. This suggests establishing a vision of freedom, equity, education, and justice, as Homi Bhabha points out “informed by civil liberties and human rights, which carries with it the shared obligations and responsibilities of common, collaborative citizenship.”¹³

Unity, Civil Liberties, and Patriotism

Official calls for unity, burdened with rage and grief for those killed or injured in the terrorist attacks, waver between agitprop displays of patriotism and a genuine attempt to understand and address the political reality of balancing civil liberties and national security, fear and reason, compassion and anger. The political reality that emerges from the crisis points to a set of choices the American people are being asked to make that include an ongoing military war in Afghanistan, with the possibility of wider military strikes on other Islamic nations, and the demand to sacrifice some basic civil liberties to strengthen domestic security. Of course, Americans have every right to demand that our children, cities, water supply, public buildings, and most crucial public spaces be safe from terrorists. And we must do something in response to such brutal acts of violence. But the demand for security and safety calls for more than military action and the rescinding of basic civil liberties; it also points to larger political issues that demand a diplomatic offensive based on a critical examination of the very nature of our own domestic and foreign policy. Educators have an important role to play in encouraging such an examination of American history and foreign policy among their students and colleagues. Equally important is the need for educators to use their classrooms not only to help students to think critically about the world around them but also to offer a sanctuary and forum where they can address their fears, anger, and concerns about the events of September 11 and how it has affected their lives. The events of September 11 provide educators with a crucial opportunity to reclaim schools as democratic public spheres in which students can engage in dialogue and critique around the meaning of democratic values, the relationship between learning and civic engagement, and the connection between schooling, what it means to be a critical citizen, and the responsibilities one has to the larger world.¹⁴

Nothing justifies the violence by terrorists committed against those innocent people who died on September 11^th. Americans should be unified against that type of terror, and rightly so, but we need to define not only what we are against but also what we stand for as a nation, and how such a project draws from the principles and values that inform the promise of a more fully developed democracy in a global landscape. In a time of crisis, unity is a powerful force, but it is not always innocent, and it must become part of a broader dialogue about how the United States defines itself and its relationship to the rest of the world, particularly to those Western and Middle Eastern societies that reject or are resistant to democratic and egalitarian rule.

If this national crisis has shattered the American sense of alleged complacency and purported self-indulgence, it has also aroused a sense of unity that has sent a chilling message of intolerance towards dissenting opinions about America’s role. Early casualties included two journalists, Dan Guthrie, a columnist for the Daily Courier of Grants Pass, Oregon, and Tom Gutting of The Texas City Sun, both of whom were fired for criticizing President Bush soon after the terrorist bombings.¹⁵ Equally disturbing was a statement issued by both the chancellor and the trustees of the City University of New York, condemning professors who criticized United States foreign policy at a teach-in.¹⁶ Neither the trustees nor the chancellor attended the teach-in, basing their response on articles that appeared in The New York Post. A similar attack occurred by Lynne V. Cheney, wife of the vice president and former chairwoman of the National Endowment for the Humanities, and Scott Rubush, an associate editor of FrontPage magazine. Cheney denounced Judith Rizzo, deputy chancellor of the New York City schools when she “said terrorist attacks demonstrated the importance of teaching about Muslim cultures.”¹⁷ Rubush, while appearing on National Public Radio in October, argued that four faculty members at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill had been critical of American foreign policy and should be fired because “They’re using state resources to the practical effect of aiding and abetting the Taliban.”¹⁸

Cheney was also involved in what was one of the most disturbing attacks on people who have dissented against American foreign policy. She and Senator Joseph Lieberman founded an organization called the American Council of Trustees and Alumni, which published the recent report, Defending Civilization: How Our Universities Are Failing America, and What Can Be Done About It.¹⁹ This report includes a list of 117 comments made by faculty and students in the wake of September 11 and points to such comments to argue that American campuses are “short on patriotism and long on self-flagellation.”²⁰ The report not only suggests that dissent is unpatriotic but also reveals the names of those academics who are allegedly guilty of ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Foreword
• PROLOGUE: Reflections on Henry Giroux’s Life and Work
• SECTION I: Social Theory and the Struggle for Pedagogies: Sociology of Education, Critical Pedagogy, and Border Pedagogy
• SECTION II: Culture as Pedagogy: Cultural Studies, Public Pedagogy, and the Politics of Popular Culture
• SECTION III: Neoliberalism and the Phantasmagoria of the Social: Post-9/11 Politics, the Decline of the Public Sphere, and the Decay of Humanity
• SECTION IV: No Way Out: The Devouring of Higher Education
• SECTION V: Radicalizing Hope: Public Intellectualism, The Vitalism of Education, and the Promise of Democracy
• Index
• About the Author, Editors, and Contributors