Educational Philosophy and Theory, Vol. 42, No. 3, 2010 doi: 10.1111/j.1469-5812.2008.00415.

Politics of Critical Pedagogy and New Social Movements

Seehwa Cho
University of St. Thomas, Minnesota
Submitted: 26 October 2007; Accepted: 22 November 2007

Abstract The proponents of critical pedagogy criticize the earlier Neo-Marxist theories of education, arguing that they provide only a language of critique. By introducing the possibility of human agency and resistance, critical pedagogists attempt to develop not only a pedagogy of critique, but also to build a pedagogy of hope. Fundamentally, the aim of critical pedagogy is twofold: 1) to correct the pessimistic conclusions of Neo-Marxist theories, and 2) to transform a language of critique into a language of possibility (Giroux, 1997, p. 108). Then, what political projects do critical pedagogies present to us? What alternative visions of schooling do critical pedagogies offer against the mainstream pedagogy? The purpose of this paper is to identify main projects of critical pedagogy, and to explore overarching politics that underlie the eld of critical pedagogy. Although there are diverse theories and approaches in critical pedagogy, three overarching projects can be identied, which I call: 1) the project of experience, 2) the project of anti-system, and 3) the project of inclusion. Based on an examination of the general trends and characteristics of these three projects of critical pedagogy, I argue that three prominent politics that underlie the eld of critical pedagogy are culturalist politics, self/identity politics, and grassroots politics. In trying to better understand why and how critical pedagogy has developed the political stances as it has, the last part of the paper links these three politics to the historical developments of the New Left and the New Social Movements. Keywords: critical pedagogy, social movements, culturalist politics, Identity politics, grassroots politics

1. Introduction The proponents of critical pedagogy criticize the earlier Neo-Marxist theories of education, arguing that they provide only a language of critique. By introducing the possibility of human agency and resistance, critical pedagogists attempt to develop not only a pedagogy of critique, but also to build a pedagogy of hope. Fundamentally, the aim of critical pedagogy is twofold: 1) to correct the pessimistic conclusions of Neo-Marxist theories, and 2) to transform a language of critique into a language of possibility (Giroux, 1997, p. 108). Leonardo (2004a) sums up
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the aim of Critical Social Theory as imagin[ing] an alternative reality ... to forge alternative and less oppressive social arrangements (p. 11). As such, he contends that Critical Social Theory is, in essence, a political project. If we were to, for the moment, accept Leonardos contention that Critical Social Theory is fundamentally a political project, then as a sub-eld of Critical Social Theory, critical pedagogy too, must also be, in essence, a political project. Then, what political projects do critical pedagogies present to us? What alternative visions of schooling do critical pedagogies offer against the mainstream pedagogy? The purpose of this paper is to identify main projects of critical pedagogy, and to explore overarching politics that underlie the eld of critical pedagogy. Although there are diverse theories and approaches in critical pedagogy, three overarching projects can be identied, which I call: 1) the project of Experience, 2) the project of Anti-system, and 3) the project of Inclusion. Based on an examination of the general trends and characteristics of these three projects of critical pedagogy, I argue that three prominent politics that underlie the eld of critical pedagogy are the culturalist politics, the self/identity politics, and the grassroots politics. In trying to better understand why and how critical pedagogy has developed the political stances as it has, the last part of the paper links these three politics to the historical developments of the New Left and the New Social Movements. 2. Agenda of Critical Pedagogy At its core, critical pedagogy has the following two major agendas: transformation of knowledge (e.g. curriculum) and pedagogy (in a narrow sense, i.e. teaching). The most signicant focus of critical pedagogy is the relationship between knowledge and power. By asserting that knowledge is intrinsically interwoven with power, critical pedagogy adamantly and steadfastly dismisses the mainstream assumption of knowledge as objective and neutral. Based on this premise that knowledge is power, ideology critique and discourse analysis are employed as powerful conceptual tools in elucidating the interconnectedness between knowledge and power. Major power dynamics in society (such as class, race, and gender) are highlighted in this endeavor of critically examining the connections between power and knowledge. From this process, critical pedagogy aims to construct alternative or counter-hegemonic forms of knowledge, and therefore power. On this, critical pedagogies are not only inuenced by, but also closely maintain the earlier Neo-Marxist theories of education. In the late 1970s and 1980s, a signicant number of critical studies emerged, bringing a new approach to school knowledge and curriculum. The traditional curriculum studies focused mainly on how to best deliver predened knowledge and skills to students. This mainstream approach assumed knowledge to be objective, neutral, and given. However, new critical theories began to raise new questions about the relationship between school knowledge and the power structures of society. Rather than asking how to organize and deliver school knowledge most efciently to students, these new critical theories raised a whole new set of questions, focusing on the ideological functions of school knowledge. Apple (1979) captured and summarized the questions of the new curriculum theories into the following three truncated questions: 1) Whose knowledge?; 2) For whose benet?; and 3) At whose expense?
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The critical theories subsequently developed new critical concepts. The hidden curriculum was explored as a powerful apparatus for indoctrinating students through the routines of and unspoken norms in daily school life and practices (Apple, 1979; Giroux, 1988). Additionally, the concepts of habitus and cultural capital were articulated as mechanisms through which the class hierarchy becomes re/produced within the school knowledge system (Bourdieu & Passeron, 1977). Several empirical and theoretical studies explored how hegemonic ideologies were embedded in and through school (Young, 1971; Apple, 1979). This further fueled the cultural war between the Right and the Left regarding which and whose knowledge should constitute the ofcial curriculum (Shor, 1992a; Zavarzadeh & Morton, 1994). Controversies over E. D. Hirschs cultural literacy (1988) and the standards of history (Nash, Crabtree & Dunn, 1997) are just two prominent examples of this cultural war. The other major focus of critical pedagogy is the democratization of pedagogy, or more broadly, creating an emancipatory culture of schooling. Against the authoritarian and hierarchical power relations in classroom and school culture, critical pedagogy explores more democratic pedagogical arrangements and school culture, aiming to empower students. The goal is to critique and transform those classroom conditions tied to hegemonic processes that perpetuate the economic and cultural marginalization of subordinated groups (Darder, Baltodano & Torres, 2003, p. 13). Freires Pedagogy of the Oppressed (1970) has undoubtedly been the most inuential work in this vein. Based on a resolute critique of banking education, Freire proposed a problem-posing pedagogy for emancipatory and democratized education. Since then, his inuence has been widely seen in many studies on schooling, from Empowering Education by Ira Shor (1992b), to Teaching to Transgress by bell hooks (1994), to Rethinking Schools (1994). In addition, we have also witnessed a burgeoning of literature focusing on emancipating and empowering pedagogy from the feminist (Luke & Gore, 1992) and the anti-racist perspectives (McLaren, 1997; Elenes, 2003; Darder, Baltodano & Torres, 2004; Allen, 2004; Grande, 2004; Leonardo, 2004b). However, what has been relatively less emphasized is a critical study of political economy, policies and structural aspects of school and education. From the mid-1970s, there emerged critical studies investigating the relationship between education and structural inequalities. Schooling in Capitalist America (1976) by Bowles and Gintis was the seminal work in this new and important area of study. Their work led to volumes of studies focusing on the relationship between schools, capitalism, and the State (Dale et al., 1981; Carnoy & Levin, 1985; Apple, 1982). However, this political economic paradigm was largely replaced by cultural studies in the later critical pedagogy discourse (a point I will revisit later). As mentioned earlier, critical pedagogy emerged as a reaction against, or as a corrective effort against, economic determinism of these earlier critical theories, like Bowles and Gintis. If education and politics are primarily determined by the economy as argued by Bowles & Gintis (1976), many educators lamented that there would be little which could be done in schools to change society in any fundamental way (of course, except an economic revolution of sorts). One of the
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major limitations of the correspondence theory of Bowles and Gintis, it was argued, was to portray the capitalist system as all powerful and to underplay the resistance of agency (this is where Willis, Apple, and Giroux entered the scene). As a way to overcome this economic determinism and aporia, critical pedagogy began to move away from the economy and heavily focused on culture (Cho, 2006).1 It is therefore not surprising that critical pedagogy in its current form rarely addresses issues such as nance/school funding, school organizations, governance, the school board, bureaucracy, the teachers union, politics of professionalism, national educational policy, privatization, charter schools, and school choice. By this, I am not suggesting that critical pedagogy entirely ignores and rejects these systematic and structural questions and considerations. Indeed, there are some critical theorists who tackle these aspects, such as recent studies on vouchers, NCLB (No Child Left Behind), and neo-liberal globalization (Apple, 2001; Giroux, 2004; Apple & Buras, 2006). Some critical pedagogists have consistently emphasized the importance of the relations between the macro-power dynamics in the larger society and micro-power relations within the educational institutions (such as McLaren, Giroux, etc.). However, I think it is largely the case that much of the critical pedagogy literature and practices tend to give greater weight to classroom pedagogy, agency, and culture. Consequently, critical pedagogy is relatively weak in embedding the analysis of education in the structure of economy and polity. As such, the political economy, policy study, and political struggle against capital and the State are neither very visible nor very popular in critical pedagogy. 3. Three Projects of Critical Pedagogy As stated above, the major agendas of critical pedagogy are democratization of knowledge and democratization of school culture. How then are we to achieve these agendas? What projects does critical pedagogy present in order to realize emancipatory education? There are various ideas and propositions from individual critical pedagogues, and there exist nuanced differences among them. At the risk of over-generalization, here I identify three projects that seem to be predominant within critical pedagogy. The rst is what I call the project of experience. When the hegemonic power of the system presents and enforces its own worldview as the natural and the universal truth, where do we go to counteract the hegemonic claims and explore alternatives? Critical pedagogy basically relies on experiences against the claims of hegemonic truth. The pedagogy of experience aims at freeing students from oppressive cultural frames of knowing by providing them with new ways of claiming authority for their own experience (Zavarzadeh & Morton, 1994, p. 22). Claiming ones own experience is regarded not only as a process of ideology critique, but also a way to nd alternatives. As Darder, Baltodano and Torres (2003) put it, students come to understand themselves as subjects of history and to recognize that conditions of injustice ... can also be transformed by human beings (p. 12). In other words, critical pedagogy focuses on the subject (lived experiences and genuine voices) from which ideology critique, resistance, and alternatives are to be realized. In
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understanding and re-claiming students experience, it is of utmost importance to pay close attention to the diverse social locations of students, that of class, race, gender, sexuality, religion, nationality, disability, and any other marginalized statuses. Here it should be noted that there are debates over as to how to dene and conceptualize experience, such as what can be considered genuine voices, how to understand and represent experience, and what constitutes resistance (see Scott, 1992; Young, 2000; Cho, 2006). Subsequently, standpoint epistemology and essentialism are hotly contested and debated (see Nanda, 1997; Naples, 2003). However, regardless of how one conceptualizes experience, voice and resistance, what is common in the politics of experience is that experience, especially students experience, is where alternative emancipatory education is to be pursued. Closely related to the rst, the second project of critical pedagogy is what I call the project of anti-system. As critical pedagogy relies on experiences (everyday politics), it also tends to gear towards an anti-structure, anti-system approach for inventing democratic classroom and school culture. It especially emphasizes antihierarchical pedagogy, non-hierarchical form of authority, and participatory democracy. For instance, Patti Lather (1991) denes (and promotes) participatory, dialogic, and anti-hierarchical as the alternative form of authority in the postmodernism of resistance (p. 160). This non-hierarchical, anti-system position is heavily inuenced by poststructuralism and postmodernism, and more specically by the Nietzschean and Foucauldian conception of power. Foucault, who was heavily inuenced by Nietzsche, presents a different conceptualization of power. Instead of seeing power as possession, he maintains that it is more useful to see power as technology or mechanism. In other words, what really matters is not who has power (i.e. capitalists or the ruling class) or where power is located (i.e. the State). Rather, the real focus, according to Foucault, should be on how power operates and what mechanisms power employs (Foucault, 1980). The political implications of Foucaults theory are enormous. Since power in the Western modern society no longer operates exclusively through the State and the State apparatus, replacing the repressive power of the State would not bring fundamental changes in the structure of power (thus, the famous phrase, power is everywhere). As such, this position tends to lead to a politics of anti-systematic changes. We should no longer be nave enough to believe in the possibility of systemic changes via revolution, according to this position. Instead of pursuing systemic changes, the only viable option left is local grassroots democracy movements from bottom up.2 Along with the abandonment of systematic changes (including the State), individual and local struggles have become the main site of social change (a point to which I return later). Now the target of struggle is not just the State, institutions, and formal hierarchies of power, but more importantly it is everyday life and experiences the molecular levels which power circulates and formulate subject. We have seen in recent decades a proliferation of studies on feminist pedagogies based on a politics of process, be they consensus, dialogue, pluralism, or celebration of differences (for example, Luke & Gore, 1992; Ropers-Huilman, 1998; Mahler & Tetreault, 2002; Macdonald & Sancher-Casal, 2002). The focus of this project has been to
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nd a democratic (hopefully power-free, or less power-ridden) process of engagement, and the emphasis has very much been on anti-authority and anti-hierarchy. Again, it should be noted that there have been debates and differences among critical pedagogues on question of power, hierarchy, and authority. Ellsworths article, Why Doesnt this Feel Empowering? (1989), sparked debates on this very question of whether and how critical pedagogy could be power-free and genuinely empowering. Some feminists have presented poststructural critical pedagogy as an alternative against the moralizing and totalizing modernist critical pedagogy (Luke & Gore, 1992; Lather, 1992, 1998). Other postmodernists are more sanguine about a critical pedagogy free from power and hierarchy, and instead have proposed a pedagogy of negation (Sidorkin, 1997; Gur-Zeev, 1998; Biesta, 1998). The third political project is what I call the project of inclusion. The main aim of this project is to reform, fundamentally, educational and other social institutions to make them more inclusive, based on desirable principleswhatever the underlying principles are for reforming the system, be they equality, equal rights, antidiscrimination, democracy, emancipation, common goods, individual liberty, recognition, peace, or social justice. The guarantee of equal opportunity and equal power for the underprivileged, oppressed, marginalized, or subjugated is the ultimate goal for this project. The project of inclusion could be understood as having similar veins of reason as rights-based liberalism and multiculturalism. That is why, I believe, the word inclusion is not usually employed in critical pedagogy discourse. Rather, critical pedagogy uses terms such as border-crossings, between-borders, border-less, border-lands, or border-ness (Giroux, 1992; Giroux & McLaren, 1994; Darder, Baltodano & Torres, 2003). These new terminologies seem to be an attempt to differentiate and distance critical pedagogy from the mainstream inclusive multiculturalism, which would explain the recent calls, among critical pedagogues, to go beyond the mainstream approaches of inclusion to more critical multiculturalist approaches: insurgent multiculturalism (Giroux, 1995), revolutionary multiculturalism (McLaren & Farahmandpur, 2001), and subaltern cosmopolitan multiculturalism (Buras & Motter, 2006). However, it is not clear if this new border-crossing, radical multiculturalism will really present different and/or new political projects and programmatic strategies. The inclusion project is still more often directed against the privileges of those in positions of power, rather than against the system of power itself. And the rights-based project is a slippery and risky one. The discourse of rights and justice, as Benton (1993) pointed out, can easily become an ideology, a form of mystication, because [i]n societies governed by deep inequalities of political power, economic wealth, social standing and cultural accomplishments, the promise of equal rights is delusory with the consequences that for the majority, rights are merely abstract, formal entitlements with little or no de facto purchase on the realities of social life (p. 144). 4. Politics of Critical Pedagogy and the New Social Movements Above, I have presented three projectsthe project of experience, the project of anti-system, and the project of inclusion. Each of these projects has its own focus
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and emphasis. However, are there some common politics that encompass the foci of all these projects? Can we identify general political perspectives that underlie critical pedagogy projects? I think there are three politics which inuence the projects of critical pedagogy and they are Culturalist politics, Self/Identity politics, and Grassroots politics. In the following, I will examine how each of these politics has come to tenure their predominant political position within critical pedagogy, by exploring them in the historical contexts of broader social movements. 4.1 The Culturalist Politics The most predominant politics of critical pedagogy is the culturalist politics. Critical pedagogy is largely oriented toward the sphere of culture/superstructure (knowledge, language, representation, discourse, and ideology), rather than the base (economy) or infrastructure (social institutions). A clear indication of this culturalist politics can be found in the very denition of critical pedagogy, which was often dened as cultural politics. For instance, McLaren (1995) dened critical pedagogy as a form of cultural politics that is fundamentally concerned with student experience (p. 42). Darder, Baltodanto & Torres (2003) also argue that critical pedagogy seeks to address the concept of cultural politics by both legitimating and challenging students experiences and perceptions (p. 11). In Critical Pedagogy: A look at the major concepts (2003), McLaren presented a dozen key concepts in critical pedagogy. They are: forms of knowledge; class; culture; dominant culture, subordinate culture, and subculture; cultural forms; hegemony; ideology; prejudice; discourse; hidden curriculum; curriculum as a form of cultural politics; and cultural capital. The majority of these key concepts emphasize the sphere of culture and superstructure. This list clearly shows the predominance of cultural politics in the critical pedagogy. In the 20th century, Marxist and other critical theories, in essence, shifted their focus from base/economy to superstructure/culture. We have witnessed the increasing emphasis of the importance of the superstructure and the culture being developed and articulated by Neo-Marxist traditions for some time, from Antonio Gramscis (1971) import of the concept of hegemony in the 1920s30s, to Frankfurt Critical Theories attention to popular culture and mass media in the 1940s60s (Jay, 1973; Arato & Gebhardt, 1978), to Louis Althussers (1971) affective theory of ideology and Ideological State Apparatus in the 1970s, to the poststructuralist and the postmodernist theories heavy focus on culture and knowledge since the late 1970s (Foucault, 1980; Lyotard, 1984; Baudrillard, 1994). This cultural politics is not unique to critical pedagogy, however. Rather, it is a reection of a change in social movements since World War II. The most signicant change of the new social movements is a retreat from class-based, anti-capitalism struggles, and a move towards anti-system or more specically, counter-cultural or identity-based struggles. From the 19th century until 1939, the international workers movement, inspired by the Russian Revolution, was the leading and dominant social movement. Right after World War I, there was a surge of revolutionary struggles, which globally spread to Japan, Korea, Mexico, Indonesia, Iran, Turkey,
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Uruguay, Mongolia, Egypt, Hong Kong, Syria, the Philippines, and elsewhere (Tilly, 2004). However, it was apparently clear by the 1930s that the revolutionary possibility in Europe was all but lost and the European working class eventually bought into the capitalist system. The crisis of liberal capitalism resulted in the emergence of totalitarian regimes (Fascism, Stalinism, and the New Deal)3, and successfully incorporated European proletariats into the capitalist system (Arato & Gebhardt, 1978; Davis, 1999; Wallerstein, 2004). The situation was the same, if not worse on a couple fronts, in the United States. To begin with, the American working class never developed as a strong unied class, but instead, remained fragmented, due to geographical mobility, nativism, cultural divisions of the proletariat, and most of all racism (Davis, 1999). There was a height of unionism and a momentum of socialism in the US after the depression. However, it was short-lived. By the end of World War II, the labor unions were fully incorporated into the capitalist system. Wartime nationalism, Cold War consensus, and the economic boom, as well as the United States dominance of the world economy, inculcated patriotic, anti-radical and pro-authoritarian attitudes in each generation of workers (Davis, 1999, p. 89). Furthermore, since World War II, the one-dimensionality of the market-place and the pervasive instrumental rationality spread into and saturated every sphere of life. The emergence of mass communication and the culture industry not only transformed the cultural sphere into a commodity (e.g. knowledge and art), but also deepened the colonization of the life-world by capital and commodity fetishism. Capitalist relations penetrated into all facets of life, invading more and further into the previously private arenas of life (Habermas, 1975; Arato & Gebhardt, 1978; Sanbonmatsu, 2004). The One Dimensional Man of Herbert Marcuse (1964) captures this penetration of capitalist relations into all crevices of life and society, and the objectivist reduction of the life-world. Given the co-optation of the working class into the capitalist system, and the invasion of the market logic into the private life, the New Social Movements moved away from class-based struggles to a much broader attack on the system as a totality. The enemy was no longer just capitalism or economic exploitation, but the system as a whole. The decade of the 1960s was marked by a rebellion against this conformity to the system/society (Touraine, 1971), and a critique of the cultural and spiritual deadness ... experienced in American society (Lerner, 2006, p. 167). This led the New Social Movements to focus on the cultural and psychic fabric of society. 4.2 The Self/Identity Politics The other politics dominant in critical pedagogy is self/identity politics. Overall, I think critical pedagogy is geared more towards agency/subject/self, rather than systematic or institutional changes. As stated above, experience is a key arena where critical pedagogy deploys a language of possibility against the ideological control function of the educational system. Critical pedagogy emerged against the structural determinism of the Neo-Marxist theories of education in the 1970s and 80s. It shifted its theoretical and political projects to re-discover the human agency,
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which has been all but denied or woefully ignored in structural determinism since Althusser. As such, it has focused on the subjectlived experiences, voices, and resistance. The lived experiences and everyday modes of resistance are considered as evidence of possibilities against the totalizing reproductive nature of the system. Luke (1992) elucidates the importance of experience in critical pedagogy: Agency and (raised) consciousness were reinstated on center stage, albeit this time with structural constraints acknowledged. Lived experience and intersubjective construction of meaning and identity formation were reauthenticated (p. 26). The everyday and small, yet signicant, forms of resistance are conceived and celebrated as sources of possible challenges to and eventual transformation of the system. This emphasis on the subject/agency in critical pedagogy is a reection of the New Left politics in the last few decades. Since WWII, not only have the social movements in the West declined, but also the nature of the movements has changed in signicant ways. Massimo Teodori (1969) argued that a new political position, which he called the New Left, developed out of the social movements during the 1960s. According to him, there are some core characteristics of the New Left, which differentiate it from the Old Left of the 1930s. One of the characteristics of the New Left is that freedom and human liberation became a signicant focus as both the economic system and social institutions gradually tend[ed] ... to invade and dene every aspect of citizens lives (Teodori, 1969, p. 36). This was seen in gestures of individual moral revolt and a desire of nonconformity for self-realization, self-expression and control over ones own life. By the 1960s, anti-capitalism based on class struggles was considered unrealistic and unpopular. Not only that, but the very idea of creating a new social order was viewed with much doubt and skepticism. The Soviet project was a setback for class-based political movements. The rise of Stalinism during the 1920s and 1930s had already created doubts among the Western Left who, in one way or another, looked to the Soviet Union as a great historical experiment against the capitalist West. However, following the Soviet invasion of Hungary in 1956 and the Prague Spring, it became clear to some Western Left that the Soviet project was a failure. Disillusioned, the New Left either saw socialist theory as having to be seriously revised, or to be abandoned altogether. In addition to the disappointing and disturbing failure of the Soviet experiment, the nation-building Bandung project of the Third World was proved also to be a disappointment. Out of the liberation movement rose dictatorships and corrupt national states, as Fanon (1963) had presciently warned against.4 By the 1970s and 1980s, it became obvious to many that Third World countries would not be able to catch up to the rich nations as modernization theories had led them to believe. Instead, we saw and continued to see Africa and Latin America falling into economic crisis (debt and chronic volatility) and political instabilities (military coups and the rise of authoritarian regimes) (Herbst, 2000). The incredulity towards systemic changes (mainly the State) that rose out of these failures and defeats marked the beginning of self/identity politics as a new political praxis. It was no longer persuasive to many, even to the Left, to hope that a new social order would improve the human condition, let alone solve social
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problems. It seemed that fundamental social changes would be neither a feasible possibility nor a desirable solution. Rather, it seemed sensible, even if by default, to accept the inevitable immorality of society, in that whatever new social structure was built, it would likely induce more violence and end up developing into another form of totalitarian authority. As building a moral society became further out of reach and out of vogue, the focus turned toward the Self. John Sanbonmatsu (2004) characterizes this change succinctly: the Sixties had nonetheless effected a shift in tone or style in Western praxis, one that decisively privileged emotive and aesthetic expression of an inner, radical nature over considerations of strategy, theoretical coherence, or the patient construction of a counter-hegemonic movement (Sanbonmatsu, 2004, p. 23). From this impetus, we see the burgeoning rise of identity politicswomen, race, gays and lesbian, and disability politics (Harvey, 1990; Sanbonmatsu, 2004; Tilly, 2004). This self/identity-oriented focus deepened even more as the Left politics and social movements began to decline in the 1970s, and as the New Right became dominant in the political and social arenas. We have seen a further withdrawal from social activism and a move towards building a moral man (Lerner, 2006). 4.3 The Grassroots Politics Another politics predominant in critical pedagogy is one that gives emphasis to grassroots democracy and a non-hierarchical form of authority. This non-hierarchical, rehabilitated, and participatory form of authority is very prevalent in critical pedagogy literature and praxis. There is a strong tendency to negate any structure or any possible hint of authority in critical pedagogy classrooms, as a way to achieve total freedom and elimination of domination. Dialogue and consensus is regarded as the only legitimate and desirable form of decision-making (see Cho, 2006). Again, this politics is a reection of shifts in the larger social movements and politics of theories. For the last several decades, not only have the broader liberation struggles become fragmented, but also the search for a common front between and among struggles has become nearly impossible, and to be a simplistic totalizing modernism.We no longer should have illusions about systemic solutions from top down, we are told, for the only viable option left is grassroots democracy and localized movements from bottom up. Along with the abandonment of the system, including the State, the individual and local struggles have become the main site of social change. The New Left targets American society as a whole totality, based on the analysis of the total nature of the technocratic system of corporate liberalism. It is a struggle for a redistribution of power at all levels, and to a different conception of the way in which society should be organized (Teodori, 1969, p. 37). From this, direct action and grassroots organization emerged as the essential means of struggle and as the democratic mode of political expression, replacing the strategy of coalition building with liberal and labor forces. Participatory democracy is considered as a method capable of guiding and inspiring political action (Teodori, 1969).5 The new social movements also brought new tactics and strategies. The centralized party-led movements were challenged and replaced with spontaneous, decentralized,
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and grassroots actions and organizations. This anti-organization was partly a product of the 1968 Paris experience, when students were deeply disappointed by the French Communist Party, which sided with the government and called for students to quit the general strike and street uprising and return to the university. The experience of the Communist party in the Soviet Union did not help either. As the communist parties became the establishment, the New Left became deeply skeptical of any centralized organization or leadership. As such, they embraced decentralized direct action and grassroots activism as the only viable option. There was a great deal of ambivalence about leadership in the New Left, and according to Todd Gitlin, this ambivalence along with its inability to engender a coherent political ideology and organization was the main reason for the rapid disintegration of the students movements of the 1960s (Gitlin, 1980, p. 185). Seen from a strategic point of view, the recent proliferation of Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) is a reection of this localized political trend against topdown and organizational strategy.6 NGOs, aptly called peoples organization, are largely based on bottom-up grassroots movements critical of, or in opposition to national states (Petras, 1997; Hardt & Negri, 2000; Sader, 2004). This decentralized and grassroots activism has become a predominant form of social activism, becoming a fundamental principle of groups, such as the World Social Forum (Mertes, 2004; Leite, 2005). As Brenner (2006) rightly pointed out, this anti-state stance is one of the (dangerous) political legacies since the late 1970s. In summary, there is a clear alignment between the New Left politics and critical pedagogy politics. The New Social Movement differs from the Old social movement of the 1930s in several ways. The signicant change is the shift in the focus of social movements. It is no longer simply capitalism, or economic inequality and exploitation, but rather the totality of the system, a struggle for redistribution of power at all levels (Teodori, 1969, p. 37). This is why Herbert Marcuse rightfully summed up the sixties as a great refusal. In terms of its focus, the new social movement focuses on the individual and the self. Self-realization and self-expression are the ideals that the new social movements were to pursue. The other signicant change involves the form or organization of social movements. It is no longer a party-led, organized, and centralized struggle, but rather it relies on decentralized, non-hierarchical, and dispersed forms and tactics. 5. Concluding Remarks Critical pedagogy is an evolving eld, and it is by no means unied. There are various (and sometimes competing) denitions, approaches, and emphasis in critical pedagogy. Because of this elusive and diverse nature of critical pedagogy, it is not always easy to make any generalizations about its center of gravity. However, risking over-generalization, I have endeavored to turn the lens of analysis to a more macro perspective by attempting not only to track, but also to re-insert the micro developments within critical pedagogy into the backdrop of the larger historical developments in the politics of social movements. By understanding the broader discourses within the politics of critical pedagogy, I believe that we are not only better able to point out the neglected areas within
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critical pedagogy, but also to begin to expand the horizon and redirect our focus. In doing so, we, as educators, can better employ not only the strengths, but also address the shortcomings of critical pedagogy to forge new and alternative visions and politics of schooling. As a concluding remark, I will briey recap some of the implications and concerns that we can draw from the above analysis of the politics of critical pedagogy. Firstly, as I pointed out earlier, while critical pedagogy is strong in the analysis of culture and knowledge/power, it is relatively weak in policy analysis and structural issues of education. Critical theories in education used to be strong in structural analysis in the 1970s with Bowles and Gintis. Due to some limitations of their theory (and more importantly, due to changes in capitalism), critical pedagogy has moved away not only from Bowles and Gintis, but also from structural analysis itself. However, I think we have moved away too far. We may not need to return exactly to Bowles and Gintis (although I am one of those who believe that they got it right), but I think critical pedagogy can benet from further efforts in developing and presenting practical positive steps to bring about a long-term transformation in educational structure and practices. Secondly, like other New Social Movements, critical pedagogy tends to be underpinned by localist/particularist politics. As I showed above, there are historical reasons/ contexts why and how we arrived to localist politics. The new sensibility to local democracy is a right correction to previous Leninistic politics. However, it would be unfortunate if a localist politics turned our focus exclusively into individualistic or localized concerns. Furthermore, localist/particularist politics can prove powerless or even dangerous if neo-liberal capitalism is successful in weakening the public (including the State) when there is yet much to be defended about the public and the State. Thirdly, related to localist politics, although critical educators may eagerly embrace the popular mantra, think globally, act locally, in reality, I argue that critical pedagogy is weak in global thinking. It is an opportune time that critical pedagogists take globalism seriously, and re-conceptualize and explore, what Immanuel Wallerstein (2006) called the universal universalisms, which go beyond the Eurocentric universalism (p. 84). Or as Habermas (2001) puts it, we are in great need for the development of a postnational cosmopolitan consciousness. And lastly, there seems to be idealist (meaning, unmaterialistic) tendency at least among some critical pedagogy literature. The discourse of critical pedagogy is couched in abstract and ethical ideals such as hope, love, democracy, utopia, and care. Recently we see an outpouring of literature based on these ideals. These ideals are beautiful ideas and are hard to oppose. However, I think this tendency of idealism is quite problematic. When critical pedagogy gears towards ideals without presenting concrete pragmatic projects, these ideals become idealistic and speculative. This is what Gramsci called speculative distortion of theory, which happens when knowledge is produced without direct use in reality. By this, I am not suggesting that critical pedagogy as a whole is based on speculative politics. I am only suggesting that in order to realize the promises of critical pedagogy, we need to guard against the politics of critical pedagogy succumbing to its speculative and idealistic tendencies.
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Notes
1. This shift from economy/infrastructure to culture/superstructure was the general change of theoretical landscape in the social sciences in the 1980s and 1990s. 2. However, it should be noted that this is only one version of interpretation of Foucault. It is perfectly possible to accept Foucaults concept of power, yet not to reach anti-system or relativist position. For this, see Eagleton, 1991. 3. Immanuel Wallerstein (2004) insightfully includes the New Deal in the rise of totalitarian regimes in the 1930s. 4. However, let us not forget that the imperial states and multinational corporations were signicant contributors in prohibiting the establishment of the democratic nation-state in the newly decolonized countries. 5. According to Zeus Leonardo, this is perhaps the impetus that prompted a turn to a metatheory about process, perhaps captured by Freire and Habermas work. I think this is a great insight. 6. According to Wikepedia, there are roughly 40,000 internationally operating NGOs, and even higher numbers of national NGOs (2 million NGOs each in the US and in India), and some 240 NGOs come into existence every year. The vast majority of them were formed in the 1980s and the 1990s (Petras & Veltmeyer, 2005).

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