Article

Capturing the Review of Development and Change

24(1) 123–145, 2019
Gramscian Project © 2019 Madras Institute of
Development Studies
in Critical Pedagogy: Reprints and permissions:
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Towards a Philosophy DOI: 10.1177/0972266119831133
journals.sagepub.com/home/rdc
of Praxis in Education

Manojan K. P.1

Abstract
As theory and praxis of emancipatory education, critical pedagogy has been
profoundly influenced by the ideas of Antonio Gramsci on ‘ideology’, ‘hegemony’,
‘intellectuals’ and ‘human consciousness’.The works of Paulo Freire and his critical
pedagogy are found analogous in many ways to Gramsci’s Marxism specifically in
terms of the importance given to cultural action of subalterns. The imperative
in critical pedagogy is to construct counter-hegemonic positions against the
imperatives of the dominant class agenda of limiting subalterns from entering into
the making of history. As a praxis it aims at unravelling the potentialities within
subalterns through their wisdom, practical knowledge and everyday common
sense and thereby transforming educational regimes as spaces of social justice
and human liberation. This article attempts to capture the contours of critical
pedagogy and explores how Gramsci’s Marxism has influenced the formation of
critical pedagogy and its intellectual trajectories.

Keywords
Critical pedagogy, Gramsci, Freire, hegemony, critical consciousness

Introduction
Recent scholarship of critical pedagogy has created a paradigm shift in approaches
towards interrogating the complexities of educational sites and in addressing the

1
Regional Institute of Education (NCERT), Bhubaneswar, India.
Corresponding author:
Manojan K. P., Regional Institute of Education (NCERT), Bhubaneswar, Odisha 751022, India.
E-mail: kpmanoj284@gmail.com
124 Review of Development and Change 24(1)

educational aspirations of marginal populations. Founded on the currents produced

by various educational movements that emerged across the globe, critical
pedagogic thought developed as a transformative educational practice against
dehumanising and exclusionary practices (Darder, Baltodano, & Torres, 2009).
Critical pedagogy gained prominence following the interventions of Paulo Freire
(1921–1997) in adult education and critical literacy programmes in Latin America.
His book Pedagogy of the Oppressed (1970) is considered a milestone in
streamlining the critical pedagogy project. It created a new hope towards
cultivating a sense of resistance and building alternatives to ideologies and
structures that perpetuate domination and oppression (Giroux, 1997). In tandem,
the intelligentsia associated with Freire produced numerous works on liberatory
education, specifically with the marginalised and oppressed class in mind. With
this background in mind, this article attempts to explore intellectual and political
processes in critical pedagogy in relation to the thoughts and writings of the Italian
philosopher and Marxist Antonio Gramsci (1891–1937). Gramsci was imprisoned
by Mussolini’s fascist regime, which saw in him a threat and declared, ‘For at
least twenty years we must stop functioning of this brain’ (cited in Forgacs, 2000).
The writings of Gramsci during the imprisonment were published as Prison
Notebooks posthumously (Forgacs, 2000; Gramsci, 1971). It created a new
momentum and explored new avenues in political philosophy and trajectories of
Marxist theory and practice. While engaging with the nuances of critical pedagogy,
we can find an inherent presence of Gramscian thought in its theory and practice.
In accordance with some similar inquiries held in this milieu, I attempt to
capture the Gramscian schema with regard to the evolution and functioning of
critical pedagogy (Borg, Buttigieg, & Mayo, 2002; Fischman & McLaren, 2005;
Kellener, 2003; Mayo, 1999, 2010 & 2015; McLaren, Fischman, Serra, & Antelo,
1998; McLaren & Leonard, 1993; Vaddiraju, 2010). In addition to this, I try to
situate this discussion in ‘the history and the contemporary’ of the Indian
educational context. The different theoretical categories associated with Gramsci
such as ‘ideology’, ‘hegemony’, ‘intellectuals’ and ‘common sense’ are examined.
For a comprehensive analysis, the article is schematised into seven sections in
order to explore these elements in detail.

The Origin and the History of Critical Pedagogy

Since the beginning of the 20th century, movements for (progressive) ‘democratic
schooling’ led by radical educators critiqued the monolithic ways of educational
practices and the multiple forms of discrimination on the basis of gender, race,
colour, class and other cultural differences (Darder et al., 2009; Kanpol, 1999).
These movements were guided by democratic and radical thoughts envisioning a
practice of education based on values of social justice and human liberation.
Among these, John Dewey (1859–1952) was considered the father of the
progressive education movement and a pioneer in experience-based education
and pragmatic philosophy. Two of his works, Democracy and Education (1916)
Manojan 125

and The School and Society (1930), are the foundational texts in the theories of
constructivism and child-centred education. He emphasised the importance of
experiential knowledge in the learning process as a possibility to enable learners
to reflect and understand realities (Dewey, 1916). Simultaneously, the writings of
W. E. B. Dubois (1868–1963) and C. G. Woodson (1875–1950) eventually
catalysed resistance movements to claim spaces for equity-based practices in
schools and classrooms against racist prejudices. Dubois’s The Souls of Black
Folk (1902) followed by Woodson’s The Mis-education of the Negros (1933) and
the provocative writings of Jonathan Kozol, particularly Death at an Early Age
(1971) (and later Savage Inequalities: Children in America’s Schools in 1991),
lamented the dehumanising practices in schools and the extent of discrimination
faced by black children. Similarly, figures such as Myles Horton, Zilphia Johnson
and Herbert Kohl were prominent in identifying the mobilising power of
educational aspirations as an important element in the civil liberties and human
rights movements (Darder et al., 2009).
Meanwhile, the Frankfurt School and British Cultural Studies had made crucial
turns in streamlining critical pedagogy into a theoretically sound discourse
(Kellener, 2003). The Frankfurt School was predominantly concentrated around
the analysis of the impediments under cultural contradictions in the modern
capitalist social relations and critical pedagogy expands it by concentrating on
analysing its implications for school–culture relations (Guess, 1983). Frankfurt
School critiqued the obsession with instrumental rationality in the positivist
paradigm, which was heavily influenced by Western rationality and the
technocratic nature of science (Giroux, 2009; Marcuse, 1964). It intended to
explore a more self-conscious notion of reason for a more humane and
transformative action. The positivist tradition was operated through methodologies
of physical science as a model of exactness and certainty and had severe
implications in approaching the subjective contexts of the teaching-learning
practice (Giroux, 2009). The Frankfurt School held that positivism destroyed the
critical possibilities of knowledge and science and attempted to subjugate the
significance of human subjectivity and critical thinking (Guess, 1983). This, in
fact, ignored the politics of experience in the making of human history as well as
in cultivating historical consciousness (Horkheimer cited in Giroux, 2009).
In the 1950s and 1960s, British Cultural Studies (Birmingham School of
Cultural Studies) had developed theories in defence of working-class culture in
education and against dominant cultural traits propagated by predatory capitalism
(Kellener, 2003). Theorists such as Richard Hoggart, Raymond Williams, EP
Thompson and Stuart Hall were among the forerunners of British Cultural Studies
and looked at cultural studies in the milieus of socialist working-class politics and
racism (Cole, 2008). They contended that any attempt at studying culture must be
framed keeping in mind the trajectories of social relations and systems in particular
societies (Kellener, 2003). The impediments of culture and ideology were
considered an impetus in creating the circumstances of domination in society.
In this milieu, Paul Willis’ Learning to Labour (1977) is a seminal account on the
mediation of working-class cultures and education in capitalist societies. Similarly,
126 Review of Development and Change 24(1)

Stuart Hall used Gramsci’s historical method and stressed its relevance in studying
the cultural politics of ethnic and racial communities (Hall, 1986).
Correspondingly, scholarship in political economy produced certain works
like Schooling in Capitalist America by Bowls and Gintis (1976) that looked at
issues such as the alienating practices and reproduction in education under
capitalist regimes. Similarly, departures in the (new) sociology of education
facilitated new possibilities in inquiring about the micro-processes of education
and schooling. Prominently, Pierre Bourdieu’s ‘reproductive functions of
ideologies in culture and society’ and Louis Althusser’s concept of the ‘ideological
state apparatus’ were the pioneering impetus in streamlining the reproductive
school in educational studies. Reproduction theory provided the impetus for the
expansion of critical pedagogy discourse (Althusser, 1971; Bourdieu & Passeron,
1977; Giroux, 2009). Michael Apple (1980/2004) further elaborated upon the
ideological functions of curriculum in maintaining the hegemony of dominant
cultures. He referred to the imperatives of the ‘hidden curriculum’ as a major tool
in manufacturing consent through hegemonic education. At this juncture, the
element of ideology becomes a major theme of analysis. In the meantime, Ivan
Illich (1926–2002) and his scheme of ‘De-schooling Society’ laid bare the
institutional dangers of schooling and urged searching for alternatives to the
practice of schooling itself (Illich, 1971).
But undoubtedly, the intellectual space occupied by critical educational thought
reached its pinnacle with Freire (1970). The book has been accepted as a manifesto
of epistemic liberation for the marginalised across societies beyond geographical
boundaries (McLaren & Leonard, 1993; Shor, 1986). Educational theorists such
as Donaldo Macedo, Henry Giroux, Peter McLaren, Stanley Aronowitz, Maxine
Greene, Ira Shor, Jean Anyon, Antonia Darder and many others streamlined the
trajectory of the critical pedagogy movement (Darder et al., 2009; Giroux, 1997
& 2009; Greene, 1988 & 2009). In the second half of the 20th century, after the
publication of the Prison Notebooks, a new vigour emerged across social sciences
and humanities (Borg et al., 2002; Mayo, 2010; Zene, 2013). The works of Michel
Foucault also steered crucial turns in advancing discourses associated with
knowledge–power relations and institutional notions of discipline, surveillance
and forms of resistance produced by it (Kellener, 2003). Though politically
Antonio Gramsci and Michel Foucault were opposites, their interventions are
considered most influential in the recent development of critical pedagogy across
disciplines (Giroux, 2009; Kellener, 2003). But within this, more profoundly, the
affinity between Freire and Gramsci in critical pedagogy discourse is apparent
and what we explore in depth.

Paulo Freire and Critical Pedagogy

Cornel West (1993) argues that Paulo Freire is the real organic intellectual of the
20th century that Gramsci alluded to. The tutelage of Freire is considered the
juncture at which critical pedagogy expanded into an academic tradition,
imbibing both theory and practice (McLaren and Leonard, 1993; Darder, 2016).
Manojan 127

There is a consensus that without the radical ideas of Freire, it is impossible to

carve out a political praxis of liberation through education. C. A. Torres (1993)
posits as follows:

In [any] attempt of critical scholars to develop a pedagogy responding to the changing

face of cultural, social and gender relations we can stay with Freire or against Freire
but not without Freire.

Freire’s educational philosophy largely aims at the liberation of the individual

from the conditions of oppression and engaging people as full human agents
(Freire, 1968, 1970, 1993). The basic argument of Pedagogy of the Oppressed is
that in the existing model of teaching, what Freire calls the ‘banking model’,
students are subjected to become depositaries of what the teachers preach without
making any critical reflection on it. Freire elaborates as follows:

In the banking concept of education, knowledge is a gift bestowed by those who con-
sider themselves knowledgeable upon those whom they consider knowing nothing.
Projecting an absolute ignorance onto others, a characteristic of the ideology of oppres-
sion negates education and knowledge as processes of inquiry. The teacher presents
himself to his students as their necessary opposite; by considering their ignorance abso-
lute, he justifies his own existence. (Freire, 1970: 72)

Here, the possibility of inquiry and knowledge acquisition becomes minimal. In

contrast, he highlights the significance of dialogue-based interaction between
the student and teacher to perceive world realities. Thus, education could be the
solution to the contradiction in a student–teacher hierarchy whereby the teacher
becomes a facilitator to students to engage fearlessly and develop their critical
consciousness. This is a radical vision to perceive and experience reality from a
macro perspective. This is the process of ‘conscientisation’ where the masses
can liberate themselves from false consciousness and acquire counter-
consciousness to transform dehumanising social orders, something that is
central to the Gramscian project. In most of Freire’s seminal works such as
Education, the Practice of Freedom (1967), Education for Critical Consciousness
(1968), Pedagogy of the Oppressed (1970), and The Politics of Education
(1990) we can find a central theme of educating the subaltern and a radical
politics of counterculture. If we take Pedagogy of the Oppressed alone, we can
identify the crucial points of attention that are analogous to Gramscian theory,
namely (a) the need for the historical conceptualisation of reality, (b) the
different forms of oppression and the quest for emancipation, (c) the emphasis
on education as an emancipatory possibility and (d) the methodology of praxis
for education in the given context.

The Marxist Base

Gramsci attempted to carry out Marxist interpretation of realities through more
creative approaches by engaging with culture, ideology, social class and oppression
128 Review of Development and Change 24(1)

as the seminal categories for understanding the complexities in capitalist societies

(Entwistle, 1979; Gramsci, 1970; Mayo, 2001, 2005 & 2010). Before discussing
the components of critical pedagogy, it is necessary to mention these basic
concepts and interrelationships in Marxist perspectives on education. Importantly,
the power relations of culture and the estrangements of human beings under
capitalism are important domains of analysis (Anyon, 2011; Cole, 2008; Kellener,
2003; Marx, 1844/1859; Sarup, 1978/2012). The cultural component is embodied
in the upbringing processes of a child through socialisation and cannot be seen as
an entity limited to the school atmosphere alone but includes a broader domain
involving familial and community-level circumstances. The sociocultural
environment makes children assimilate and accommodate the social circumstances
they interact with. The thought process in the socialisation process of a child
depends on the nature of human relations and the environment. The mind would
be the observer of whatever society it perceives, such as pre-literate, feudal and
industrial, or whatever actions of the adults in the society make meaning to the
child (Levitas, 1984:3). This is the way one’s consciousness is developed by
absorbing the meanings of symbols and engaging with multiple regimes of social
relations. This is as seen below also an endorsement of what Marx said earlier:

It is not consciousness that determines the social existences, but on the contrary, their
social existence determines their consciousness. (Marx, 1844/1859)

This shows the significant relationship between culture and education. The
possession of varied power in the educational realm and its exertion would result
in conditions of exploitation and oppression and have an inseparable relation with
the cultural factor. Those systems tend to maintain these privileges through their
operatives and, accordingly, culture becomes a crucial regime of contradiction,
particularly for the working class. In capitalist societies, this process should be
understood in terms of the relationship of education with habitations of varied
cultural contexts produced by market hegemony. In these contexts, education for
the working class is understood as the process of enriching experiences of the
social relations in the intellectual, social and physical levels. It ought to, thus,
enable one to understand world realities and prepare them against the structures of
oppression and exploitation (Anyon, 2011; Kellener, 2003).
Let’s take the case of analysing children’s educational performance at the level
of individual capability. In this notion, the cultural, economic or the historical
milieu of children is seldom considered. It is assumed that the performance of
children can be predicated upon the belief that children are born with an
unchangeable intellectual legacy. Sociologists in the Marxist traditions have
attempted to explore these possibilities; in fact, Gramsci has a better explanation
for this. Gramsci advocates interpreting and reinterpreting the environment of the
child in terms of varied circumstances in which their subjectivities are posited.
In elaborating the distinction between ‘education’ and ‘instruction’, Gramsci
highlights this significance as follows:
Manojan 129

It is not entirely true that ‘instruction’ is something quite different from ‘education’. An
excessive emphasis on this distinction has been a serious error of idealist educational-
ists and its effects can already be seen in the school system as they have reorganized it.
For instruction to be wholly distinct from education, the pupil would have to be pure
passivity, a ‘mechanical receiver’ of abstract notions which is absurd and is anyway
‘abstractly’ denied by the supporters of pure educativity precisely in their opposition to
mere mechanistic instruction. The ‘certain’ becomes ‘true’ in the child’s consciousness.
But the child’s consciousness is not something ‘individual’ (still less individuated), it
reflects the sector of civil society in which the child participates, and the social relations
which are formed within his family, his neighbourhood, his village, etc. (Gramsci, 1965)

Here, we can see the expansion of the cultural component into social class as a
vital category in the Marxist educational critique. Social class may be seen as a
category having multiple dimensions of stratification and having different
hierarchical attributes. For Marx, social class is a category in determining the
particular position in society (Giddens & Held, 1982). The home environment of
the child is not only the nature of habitation s/he belongs to but involves varied
social relations of the family, such as parental education, their occupational level,
their attitudes, number of books found in the home, stability, size and nature of the
family. For instance, unskilled workers who are of low educational attainment
often give less care to schoolwork of their children and usually have fewer
amenities to study (Levitas, 1984, p. 85). But children of well-educated and well-
occupied parents would get proper guidance and direction in schoolwork and be
exposed to all amenities and leisure. This, of course, represents the class factor in
the family and its effects on the educational process and exemplifies how social
class operates in the realm of education
These positions of privilege in education are well explained by Pierre Bourdieu
(1971) in his conceptions of ‘social capital’ and ‘cultural capital’. Bourdieu (1971)
affirms that access to privileged schooling and attainment of students in schooling
have a connection with their social class background and results in better
educational performances. It is manifested in elite representations of society and
glorifying the merits and its symbols as a project of the competitive labour market,
which eventually suppresses the concerns towards marginalised populations. In
these forms, social class becomes a vital category, particularly in the critique of
the evaluation of success on the basis of learning outcomes and curriculum
analysis (Anyon, 2011; Entwistle, 1977).
Many of the works produced in critical pedagogy were based on Marxian
educational theory, deriving not necessarily from the traditions of orthodox
Marxism alone, and were elaborated under the influence of critical theory and
cultural studies (Kellener, 2003). In the evolution of critical pedagogy, Marxism
is the major theoretical base in devising an anti-oppressing praxis of democratic
education (Anyon, 2011; Cole, 2008; Wringe, 1984). Marxism has its base in the
view that education is a weapon of the working class to fight against the
implications produced by the dominant capitalist system and to organise the
working class to create new conditions of social change (Anyon, 1980; Levitas,
130 Review of Development and Change 24(1)

1984, p. 36). The changing conditions in social relations tend to alter and modify
educational systems to reproduce dominant values, and the task is to forge and
figure out alternative conditions to combat the dominating structure (Kellener,
2003). The major challenge raised against classical Marxist theory was in its view
that changes in society were the mere product of economic relations. This notion
was found insufficient to explore different subjectivities in terms of race, gender
and other cultural dimensions of experiences. It was the major turning point
towards the emergence of neo-Marxian approaches in education, developing more
subjective dimensions on aspects of culture, consciousness and subjectivities
(Anyon, 2011; Yaacoby, 2012). The other contention was that Marxism emphasised
more on ‘labour’ as the distinct form of human activity in developing one
individual and missed out on deriving the process of individual consciousness and
its engagement with other social relations (Darder et al., 2009). It was argued that
orthodox Marxism was insufficient in developing a full-fledged theory on the
subjective dimensions of education (Anyon, 1980; Entwistle, 1977; Wringe,
1984). Critical pedagogy has ventured to depart from orthodox Marxist lines to
explore the questions of gender, race, agency, subjectivity and so on, and the
Gramscian schema is positioned at that specific juncture.

Positioning Gramsci: In between Marx, Freire and Critical

Pedagogy
It is from the theories of Gramsci that Marxist discourses on education delve into
more critical avenues in the age of predatory capitalism and varied forms of
oppression (Anyon, 2011; Mayo, 2010). Gramsci inspired many critical educators
to develop their methodology of praxis in various domains. In the traditional
Marxist notions, culture was considered a phenomenon of reflections of economic
relations in society within the base–superstructure continuum. For Gramsci,
culture was not something limited to the base–superstructure dialectic, but a
mediation of continuous interaction of several forces within the economy and
society (Gramsci, 1971; Marx, 1859). This view, in fact, offered a new insight that
culture as a phenomenon was not to be studied in diversity but must be located in
the patterns of diversity at different stages of social development in history.
Freire’s thoughts are deeply analogous to Gramsci’s Marxism and reflect his
dialectical apprehension in engaging with subaltern consciousness through
cultural action (Fischman & McLaren, 2005). The ideal spokesperson in critical
pedagogy is synonymous with the Gramscian proposition of the transformative
intellectual (Giroux, 1983) who holds the responsibility of mobilising the
collective in counter-hegemonic action. The most targeted endeavour in critical
pedagogy is the cultivation of critical consciousness in an individual, which
resembles Gramsci’s very conception of common sense (Gramsci, 1971).
We can see Gramscian influence in various frames of critical pedagogy. For
Manojan 131

instance, the very politics of critical pedagogy lies in constructing counter-

hegemonic positions of resistance and alternatives against the imperative position
of the ruling class agenda of limiting the subaltern from entering into making of
historical processes. Critical pedagogy aims at catalysing the potentialities within
the subaltern within the contours of their own wisdom deriving from their practical
knowledge and their everyday lives.
It is argued that for exploring the nature and extent of domination in an
educational setting, there is no other concept more appropriate than Gramsci’s
hegemony (Fontana, 2002). Educational institutions tend to maintain certain
structures of domination and hierarchy through norms, restrictions and projections
of symbols of accepted notions of behaviour and attainment models. Gramsci
calls for continuous counter-narratives to dismantle the hegemony of capitalism
and views education as the regime where resistances can be inaugurated and
established to critique the cultural domination and develop counter-hegemony
(Gramsci, 1971). Hegemonic education would cultivate a consensus among the
subalterns on certain models of success and result in establishing a wider
agreement among the masses against actual class interests or revolutionary
consciousness. In these circumstances, the task is to conscientise pupils to interpret
relations in their political and economic surroundings which would enable them
to apprehend systemic causes of subordination (Freire, 1970; Gramsci, 1971).
This is the principal ‘war of position’ in critical pedagogy classrooms and is the
crux of the Gramscian counter-hegemony project. Ultimately, critical pedagogy
becomes the vital process of making schools and classrooms social justice
building spaces (Darder et al., 2009). As explained earlier, educational sites are
constructed and maintained by asymmetrical structures of power and are bound to
maintain those asymmetries by manipulating the truthful dissemination of social
realities through curricular imperatives. Here, the task of a critical educator is to
become the transformative intellectual and to shape learners as organic intellectuals
for counter-hegemonic actions. In this fashion, the Gramscian legacy strengthens
critical pedagogy to form a pedagogy of insubordination by enabling students as
active human agents to question the ideologies that create the conditions of
oppression (Giroux, 1983, 2009; Steinberg, 2007).
Altogether, it is observable that being more or less a Marxist project, critical
pedagogy follows more in the path of a Gramscian model of a dual-line approach
of understanding the conditions of social oppression and economic exploitation.
This analysis touches upon two positions – from the larger framework of the ‘left’
political motive and simultaneously from the position of the subaltern. This
approach can be observed in all analytical regimes of critical pedagogy such as
knowledge, hegemony, ideology, intellectuals and so on, and within any other
forms of praxis. The discussions carried out indisputably establish the presence of
Gramscian critical pedagogy. To elaborate more on this, the next two sections on
(a) critical pedagogy as a political praxis and (b) principles of critical pedagogy
will help capture how Gramscian language is deep-rooted in the theoretical
foundations of critical pedagogy.
132 Review of Development and Change 24(1)

Critical Pedagogy as a Political Praxis

Critical pedagogy, as an ensemble of theory as well as practice, derives from the
currents of the struggles for freedom and self-determination in educational
settings. It is a political project of praxis against the ideological hegemony in
social, cultural and economic spheres, which are replicated in classrooms and
other educational sites. It relies upon blending theory (intellectual) and practice
(physical) into a dialectical form based on reflection, dialogue and action (Freire,
1968). Critical pedagogy practice enables children to ask questions and become
subjective agents of the learning process. Here, the act of dialogue becomes a
political process to develop critical consciousness, which Freire terms
‘conscientisation’. In this act, the student as well as the teacher reaches a non-
hierarchical position in which both agents participate actively, in contrast to the
banking method. Freire stresses that without this participation, the process of
learning cannot occur in its actual sense. As a method, it stands for a dialogical
interaction between the teacher and the student. These acts call for a shift in power
concentrated in the teacher to the agency of the learner in the learning process by
the recognition of the student’s historical existence in an altered power equation.
Gramsci, too, emphasises the reciprocal roles between teachers and pupils; he
says teachers have to take the active role of a pupil in the learning process where
s/he can learn from the knowledge acquired by the children. This act promotes the
position of the pupil to the level of the teacher, which would initiate a democratic
space between the learners and learned (Gramsci, 1971). This project of democratic
education predominantly engages with two realms: (a) cultural politics and
politics of knowledge and (b) ideology and hegemony.

Cultural Politics and Politics of Knowledge

Culture is a crucial realm of complexity in critical pedagogy. Culture represents
the way of life of people and how they make sense and give meaning to various
occasions in their lives. There are circumstances in which certain forms of
knowledge are legitimised and perpetuated as valid ones and some are subjugated,
devalued and/or misrepresented in the social sphere and academia as well. The
denigration of indigenous epistemologies of native populations and the imposition
of dominant and elite knowledge forms are examples of the cultural hegemony
prevailing in the academia (Denzin & Lincoln, 2008; Smith, 1999 & 2005). In the
case of indigenous and tribal populations, it is argued that the establishment of
indigenous epistemologies and cultural rituals in the academia and its
representation become a contestation and a form of resistance in cultural politics
(Freire, 1970; Giroux, 1997; Kincheloe, 2005). Such an action would provide
hope of self-determination and a promise of cultural autonomy. It could be seen as
cultural action representing a movement of anti-colonisation and anti-cultural
imperialism (Smith, 1999 & 2005).
Manojan 133

In this form, the politics of knowledge and its perspectives have inseparable
lineages with the cultural question. Understanding the politics of knowledge
requires unravelling the politics behind the construction of knowledge and how it
restricts the notions of freedom. In fact, the sense of knowledge determines the
extent of freedom of an individual and education provides a major impetus for
building it. The degree of freedom depends on one’s awareness of the social
context, upon knowing what would be the effect,what would happen to something
or the consequences of something (Levitas, 1982: 16; Greene, 1988; Fromm cited
in Aronowitz, 1993: 14). This assumption could be a crucial juncture of attention
that requires an analysis of the politics of knowledge in educational processes.
Such an analysis would enquire whether particular knowledge forms have an
agenda of limiting the subordinate (or less powerful) sections from engaging
critically with the everyday contexts occurring in the realm of civil society. In this
context, critical pedagogy considers knowledge as socially constructed in the
dialectical form, which has both liberating and oppressive functions.
Henry Giroux (2009) elaborates upon micro and macro perspectives in the
distribution of knowledge in classroom learning. In a classroom, there are different
terrains of interaction such as the operationalisation of knowledge, its transmission
and engaging with its responses. Macro-objectives make students draw the link
between the course content, structure and its connection to social reality. This
approach makes students think critically about a particular social phenomenon so
that they can acquire critical consciousness. However, micro-objectives make
students attain grounding over a piece of given information or fact without
identifying its larger historical or political context. Giroux calls the trajectories of
micro-objectives as productive knowledge and macro-objectives as directive
knowledge (Giroux, 2009). Gramsci’s image of directive intellectuals is
synonymous to this role wherein they critically engage with these knowledge
dynamics among the common masses and attempt to transcend their conditions of
subalternity. In critical theory, we can see these glimpses as Habermas (1973)
identifies. Three forms of educational knowledge can be applied in the context of
classroom learning. The first one is technical knowledge, which is of limited
nature involving descriptive, quantifiable and measurable data similar to Giroux’s
productive knowledge. This type of knowledge is used by mainstream and liberal
educators expecting no dialogues from the learning community. The second type
is practical knowledge, which comes in the sequence of knowledge, and is suitable
for understanding some phenomena and its application in social life. This form of
knowledge accepts moderate participation from learners. The third is emancipatory
knowledge that helps the student in understanding facts and the historical and
political factors behind them (Habermas cited in Giroux, 2009, p. 29). This
discussion guides critical educators to distinguish the manipulative practices in
knowledge representation and unravel these. It anticipates dialogical and
dialectical ways of learning and cultivation of resistance among learners by the
active praxis of a critical educator.
134 Review of Development and Change 24(1)

Ideology and Hegemony:The Requisite of Oppositional Current

Ideology is the major contributing factor in the hegemony process. Classrooms
are observed as places of hegemonic education (Borg et al., 2002) wherein
hegemony is the struggle in which the powerful win(s) the consent of the oppressed
and the oppressed internalises and participates in this oppression without realising
it (Gramsci, 1971). Hegemony is not an act of coercion or physical torture but
rather the process of winning consent from subordinating classes wherein they
eventually internalise and subsume their oppression without being aware of the
intentions of those interests (Gramsci, 1971). In cultural hegemony, there are two
forms of cultures in the dialectical form, dominant culture and subordinate culture,
in which the ideological function has a decisive role. Dominant cultural forms
uphold the central privilege in society and own the power to control material
productions and associated spheres in civil society. The sections of society who
are living under these dominant cultures becomes comparatively inferior and
represent as the subordinate cultures. In these processes, the ideology of dominant
cultures is able to structure the subordinating cultures. It is made possible by
moulding the dreams and aspirations of people by projecting and legitimising
certain models against the lifestyle of the subordinate groups. This point becomes
important in critical pedagogy as Gramsci described it as the intellectual moral
leadership of the ideology function.
In this fashion, the dominant culture would replicate models of educational
attainment or mobility in accordance with dominant class interests which would
create an obedient workforce for the labour market. This would be replicated in
educational sites in the form of content, process and pedagogic actions. But it
should be remembered that ideology cannot be seen as an entity of one individual’s
thoughts; rather, it replicates the expression of the structure (Mouffe, 1979).
Ideology is a continuous terrain that facilitates one’s acquisition of consciousness.
Therefore, ideology largely contributes to the creation of subjectivities, whereas
subjects are always produced through socially determined ideological fields and,
therefore, subjectivity is a product of social practices. Here, the analysis can be
traced from the schooling system wherein schools largely represent the middle
class and reproduce their imperative by imposing middle-class values. It produces
new models of educational attainment, mobility and other resources and networks
of attractive lifestyles. Entwistle (1977) argues that the school by origin and
definition is a middle-class institution and cannot be otherwise. The dangers of
hidden curriculum begin within these premises (Anyon, 1980; Apple, 1980/2004).
Middle-class culture often tends to propagate its ideals as the most legitimate
form of knowledge and practices. This also tends to privilege the dominant high
culture and subjugate the cultures of marginalised sections. These agendas are
framed in its very fabric to make followers of elite or middle-class lifestyle by
highlighting their victories and grand narratives. The problem here lies in the
intoxication of the hidden curriculum work. Dominant symbols convey the
notions of patriarchy, racism and sexism through their practices, and critical
pedagogy offers a possibility to explore it in its complexity.
Manojan 135

The above juncture gives a more clarified account of the association between
the three elements (a) culture, (b) ideology and (c) knowledge in making the
structures of domination. As Peter McLaren (2009) argues, it is imperative to
ponder how ideology shapes in driving forms of domination in classrooms and
creating subjugated subjectivities and how the dominating practices are
legitimised. There is an imposition to attain a common sense to internalise these
forms of domination and maintain existing forms of inequalities by employing
the hidden curriculum imperatives. Critical pedagogy demands interrogations
over these imperatives of dominations within educational processes. Its major
impetus is to analyse power relations, economics, culture and politics with
pedagogy (McLaren, 2009: 66). The potential of critical pedagogy lies in
unravelling these hegemonic processes and mobilising the discontents in the
educational system. It is assumed that all individuals have the ability to overcome
this domination by acquiring and producing emancipatory knowledge which
essentially requires an educational enterprise in the transformative order. But
these processes and systems of education are argued to be restricted while the
possibilities and instances of hidden curriculum are ominipresent. Therefore,
critical pedagogy offers energy to uncover the dehumanising practices prevailing
in educational sites and makes learners as active agents of counter-hegemonic
action and revolutionary subjectivities.

Underlying Principles of Critical Pedagogy:

The Gramscian Trajectory
The central working threads in the praxis of critical pedagogy have been elaborated
in the previous section. Critical theorists on education have engaged with these
theoretical underpinnings in advancing a methodology of transformative actions
against oppression. The critical aspect of education relies on the unravelling of a
politics of introspection against the existing dominating patterns of education and
building up a methodology of teaching and learning. However, remarkably, the
praxis of critical pedagogy relies on certain philosophical principles entailing the
vision of freedom and self-respect to the masses. The following three principles
are enlisted in most of the basic texts of critical pedagogy: (a) historicity and
subjectivity, (b) dialectical vision and (c) critical consciousness (Darder et al.,
2009; Kanpol, 2010; Livingstone, 1987). Most importantly, we should also be
conscious about the various conceptions such as hegemony, common sense, and
civil society in Gramsci. These concepts cannot be taken as isolated themes since
they are interconnected in their political vision; each concept necessitates
engagements with other for understanding them in their complexity. Therefore, it
can be said that the emancipatory ideals in Gramsci are irrelevant, devoid of his
historical framework and the socialist project. By reflecting upon and contrasting
the same, this section brings up the foundational influence of the Gramscian
intellectual project in a more authentic form.
136 Review of Development and Change 24(1)

Historicity and Subjectivity

Historicity is an important aspect in critical pedagogy as it was in Marx and
Gramsci. Gramsci’s thesis of subalternity engages with the conditions of
marginality and the historical roots which created those margins. Stuart Hall
identifies Gramsci’s tool of radical history as the best method to study race and
ethnicity (Hall, 1986). One of the prominent aspects of Gramsci’s works is the
inquiry into how the subaltern subject has been posited into mediations of civil
society in the past and present (Patnaik, 2012 & 2013). Gramsci applies historical
lenses to understand the contemporary and the past which connects historicity and
subjectivity and is something unique in his concept of the ‘integral history/
historian’. Marcus Green (2002) highlights it as follows:

In Gramsci’s view, the ‘integral historian’ is not just a historian who documents his-
torical developments in some sort of positivistic manner but is one who understands
the socioeconomic, political, and cultural implications of such developments—how
particular historical events relate to broader socio-political contexts. It is the goal of the
integral historian to analyze particular events in order to conceptualize the processes of
historical development and understand the way in which the processes relate to peoples’
lived experiences. (Green, 2002)

In a contrasting note, we can see certain limitations in Freire in understanding the

revolutionary potential of the historical subject. Freire posits the oppressed
individual under the impediments of a culture of silence (Freire, 1970). Contrary
to this notion, Gramsci offers more optimism in terms of the subaltern’s ability to
refine the common sense and attain the good sense (Patnaik, 1988, Crehan, 2013).
Gramsci sees this possibility as the most positive element in the subaltern to
transcend their subalternity and become organic intellectuals of their kind.
For any educative action, Gramsci posits common sense within the subject as
the crucial junction of attention and subaltern subjectivity as an entity capable of
building alternate hegemony or counter-hegemony (Crehan, 2013). Critical
pedagogy, since Freire, aims at positing the potential of the ‘subject’ where
‘agency’, ‘will’ and ‘self-respect’ are guided by the mediations of common sense
within. Common sense being the realm of mediations of thought processes, where
submissiveness and pessimism are pertinent, Gramsci evokes the possibilities of
aspirations and optimism in the subaltern as a symbol of conscious action (ibid).
In this fashion, Gramsci draws a revolutionary path which integrates the
possibilities of history, memory, consciousness and liberation of the subaltern
subject. Freire, in fact, lights up this vigour in terms of an educative praxis that
questions the knowledge through the ontological vocation of becoming historical
beings. In Freire, historical memory becomes an important aspect of cultural
politics and its implication with education. He argues that the histories of the
voiceless are sublimated by a Eurocentric knowledge hegemony that is under-
woven in the traditional curriculum (Freire, 1970). He advocates ascertaining the
power of local narratives and collective histories through the critical mode of
remembering it. This interaction of subjugated knowledge can be seen as a form
of counter-memory creating spaces for oppressed sections to represent their
Manojan 137

subjugated knowledge. Giroux (2009) terms this a process of ‘liberating

remembrance’ in which it would create opportunities to evolve new forms of
solidarity, critique and self-respect by identifying the power within the subaltern
masses itself.
For whatsoever reasons, Freire is a bit ambiguous with his thesis on the ‘culture
of silence’; he is firm in providing a synergy of political education for the
oppressed to become the active agents in the construction of history making.
Freire asserts that any attempt of educational inquiry must be an inquiry over
subjectivity within a historical context. A milieu as such in fact advocates critical
pedagogy to follow a methodology of historicity in approaching different domains
of educational systems such as schools, curricula and institutional contexts. The
role of educators in developing historical consciousness among learners is central
to Freire, Gramsci and the critical pedagogy project. Freire says that the objective
here is to make learners not the objects of history but rather the subjects of history,
whereas in Gramsci the educative action is to refine the common sense regarding
historical discontinuities and tensions and to build instances of resistance and
counter-hegemonic actions.

Dialectical Vision
Dialectical vision basically means any phenomenon in nature is not limited to a
single mode of interpretation but subjected to many. The Gramscian notion of
hegemony encourages us to perceive every phenomenon in its dialectical view so
that it enables us to engage it in its complexity. Educational institutions are the
crucial platforms on which peoples’ consciousness is continuously interpellated
by the ideologies of culture and politics. It means there are multidimensional
aspects of power mediating in the educational realm and which has a significant
role in the formation of consciousness. For instance, in education, dialectical
thinking affirms schooling as not only a place of indoctrination or socialisation
but also a space of heterogeneous cultural entities that facilitate students’
empowerment and self-transformation (Giroux, 2009). In the same way, it must
be understood in the light of two other aspects. First, what position does the
school take with regard to issues of social justice and empowerment, and second,
how does it act as a terrain of reproducing dominant class interests in creating
obedient subjectivities.
The position that makes critical pedagogy a vibrant praxis is the method of
dialectical thinking in its analysis. Darder et al. (2009) point out that it embraces
the dialectical view over knowledge as a result of continuous interaction with its
different cultural contexts. The issue within society is seen not as an isolated event
but rather as a result of its continuous interaction between the individual and
society. It is necessary that students and teachers interpret events in their fullness,
that is, in their complex forms comprising different elements. It suggests not
perceiving elements in their antagonistic forms but rather as consecutive elements
of a particular formation. It is crucial to understand both human activity and
human knowledge as products and forces of different versions of powers embodied
138 Review of Development and Change 24(1)

in them and to analyse whether they, in these forms, serve the purpose of liberation
or domination. We can employ this attribute in teaching practice, curriculum
inquiry, classroom interaction, students’ engagement in their communities, school
environment and so on. The politics of this approach lies in its affirmative and
negative apprehension of social reality and appropriating them with a logical
praxis to transform it.

Critical Consciousness
In critical pedagogy, critical consciousness is an important element in the learning
process. Knowledge becomes the imperative of the dominant ideology, developing
a critical ability to examine given forms of narratives as authentic knowledge.
Paulo Freire (1968) referred to this critical ability as critical consciousness or
conscientisation. He makes the premise that human beings are conditioned by
systems of domination, authority and social class. Resurgence from these
oppressing conditions, which are internalised, requires political and historical
consciousness, that is, ‘conscientisation’. Freire looked at conscientisation as the
major element of educational projects, as a process of dialogical action that can
liberate people themselves and prompt them to fight against the conditions that
oppress them. Here, the educative action is a praxis combined with reflexive
action and critical thinking to practise freedom which is central to critical
pedagogy. The objective is to transform the positions of naïve transitivity to
critical transitive consciousness (Mayo, 2010). This is what Gramsci pointed out
as the transformation from ‘common sense’ to ‘good sense’.
The essence of this praxis lies in the efforts of human beings to enter into social
reality and in participating in the dynamic processes of making histories according
to their capabilities (Freire, 1970). But when society continues to operate under
the domination of elite and superior forces, the participation of downtrodden
sections is made under passivity and dependency. In a way, the active participation
of subaltern populations in various spheres of civil society are being controlled
and neutralised by the power and privileges of the dominant. Freire (1970)
elucidates two dangers in this. First, it contradicts the natural vocation of a person
as a natural subject and treats him or her as a passive object. Second, it contradicts
and violates the fundamentals of democratisation. The danger, according to Freire,
is that it imposes an anti-dialogue and silencing of voices so that people may not
be able to reach a level of real consciousness (Freire, 1968, p. 12). In a way, this
can be read as an expansion of consent in the Gramscian sens of a consent in
hegemony. In its defence, educative action is a process of attaining critical
consciousness through participation in the democratisation of the schooling
structure and initiating the movements of social change. It is a larger project of
self-organisation and self-education within the masses to the objectives of
humanisation (Shor, 1993). This is, in turn, the essence of Gramsci’s views on
education as he emphasises the learning process as a movement towards self-
knowledge, self-mastery and liberation. As he rightly points out,
Manojan 139

Education is also not a matter of handing out ‘encyclopedic knowledge’ but of develop-
ing and disciplining the awareness which the learner already possesses. (Gramsci, 1971)

Critical Pedagogic Thought: Implication to Indian

Political History and the Present
Quiet noticeably, in the Indian academia of educational inquiry, we can find a
very minimal account of works produced against the history and present of critical
pedagogic thought (Kumar, 2010; Kumar, 2016; Syamprasad, 2016; Vaddiraju,
2010). In fact, the pursuit of liberative education has been the perseverant thought
across the globe at a particular period in history, preceding the call and awakening
of modernity projects. Intensified resistances and struggles for emancipation of
those times were located around the quest for knowledge and education
consecutively. In India, the realm of oppressive conditions under graded
inequalities of the caste system with centuries-old histories of social exclusion
and discrimination has been the kernel of thoughts around critical pedagogy.
Jyotirao Phule (1827–1890), who is considered the pioneer in the history of Indian
social revolution, was an advocate of emancipatory education for the depressed
rural masses. Phule and his wife, Savitribai, paved the foundations of liberatory
education for the subaltern masses in India. For instance, Phule had been
continually negotiating with the British government to open schools for artisans,
peasants and the toiling masses in his province in Maharashtra. While focusing on
the demand for ensuring educational opportunities, he was simultaneously
critiquing the dominant values in the then existing Brahmanical knowledge
system which had less space for the subaltern masses to get liberated (Sunny,
2014). This can be documented as the foundational argument over the hidden
curriculum and politics of curriculum construction in the early history of Indian
educational thought. Simultaneously, two other social philosophers of his time,
Sree Narayana Guru and Mahatma Ayyankali, belonging to Kerala had been in the
forefront of similar struggles and movements in making education accessible to
the underprivileged masses, who were denied education for a long time. Both laid
emphasis on the potential for education as a platform for organising and
transforming oppressive social orders.
During British colonialism and its aftermath, Dr B. R. Ambedkar consistently
emphasised the need of downtrodden sections to get modern education for
acquiring social mobility, and to challenge Brahmanical hegemony and its
monopoly in the public sphere and civil society. Interestingly, there is a marvellous
account of a letter communication between W. E. B. Dubois and Ambedkar
discussing the oppressive conditions of the masses under casteism and racism
(Kapoor, 2003). Ambedkar reminds Dubois about the similarities of oppression
faced by untouchables in India and Negros (blacks) in the United States. Both of
them identify education as the tool of liberation and as an apparatus of the
dominant to maintain their aristocracy and privileges.
140 Review of Development and Change 24(1)

Interestingly, if we assess these revolutionaries alongside each other, we can

find a strong affinity among them in perceiving the emancipatory potential of
educative action (Zene, 2013). For instance, among the aforementioned scholars,
we can observe strong proximity in approaching education as a critical reformatory
tool in building alternative structures through transformative actions.
Consciousness formation through educative action and liberation through
organising the marginalised masses are found as the central threads in their
writings. The following quotes exemplify this.

Empower through Organising and Enlighten through Knowledge. (Guru, 1910)

Educate yourselves because we’ll need all your intelligence; Agitate because we’ll
need all your enthusiasm; Organize yourselves because we’ll need all your strength.
(Gramsci, 1919)

My final words of advice to you are educated, agitate and organize; have faith in your-
self. With justice on our side, I do not see how we can lose our battle. The battle to me
is a matter of joy. The battle is in the fullest sense spiritual. There is nothing material
or social in it. For ours is a battle for the reclamation of human personality. (Quoted
from B. R. Ambedkar’s speech given at all India Depressed Class Conference, Nagpur,
India in 1942)

The analogies in these discussions are active in certain works that have emerged
in recent times. Sharmila Rege (2010) combined the relevance of critical pedagogy
within the thoughts of Ambedkar, Phule and feminism (Rege, 2010). She identifies
the sparks of critical a teaching method based on dialogue and assertive methods
to explore self-determination among children through a Phule–Ambedkarite-
feminist praxis.
But prior to Rege (2010), Krishna Kumar (1983, 1986, 1989 & 1991) had
interrogated the politics and ideology of the Indian education system in the
domains of curriculum planning, textbook preparation and micro-processes in the
classroom. His discussions rely more upon the sociality of the educational
discipline, and the works in those trajectories are less documented even by
sociologists in India (Nambissan & Rao, 2013). Though there are a number of
studies on the implications of education among the dalit and adivasi population,
we can find that the nuances of critical pedagogic thought have engaged in a very
limited wavelengths (Heredia, 1995; Kumar, 2016; Syamprasad, 2016). We can
find that Freire’s thoughts and gestures have received considerable recognition in
the policy frameworks in India. But, it is surprising that deeper inquiries over its
intellectual as well as theoretical possibilities are less explored in Indian
educational academia compared to other developing countries. But in certain very
recent research works, we can find more expanded operationalisation of critical
pedagogy in discussing the implications of the neoliberal onslaught and caste
hegemony and the relevance of the dialogic method in contemporary times
(Kumar, 2016; Syamprasad, 2016). It can be argued that other than an extensive
(perhaps over-extensive) use of the works of Pierre Bourdieu in relation to ‘social
Manojan 141

reproduction’, ‘habitus’ or ‘cultural capital’, the advances or the nuances of

critical pedagogy are found less utilised in educational research in India (Dalal,
2014; Nambissan & Rao, 2013; Thapan, 1991). Though there are immense
possibilities for the Gramscian educational project with regard to micro as well as
macro aspects of educational practice, until recently there were few related
resources produced other than the peripheral obsession with the word ‘hegemony’
(Vaddiraju, 2010). As mentioned earlier the praxis in Gramsci cannot exist in a
vacuum without his historical materialism and working-class politics and mere
deployment of the terms much not be ‘that’ successful in assessing the complexities
in civil society and its relation with the educative action. It is also worth mentioning
that the possibilities of using the intellectual schema of Antonio Gramsci in
education are enormous; an account in those milieus is invisible even amongst
Marxists in the educational camps.

Conclusion
Critical pedagogy aims at devising a ‘pedagogy of insubordination’ and a
‘language of possibility’ which offers a politics of resistance against oppressive
social structures. This review article on critical pedagogy facilitates making of a
comprehensive frame of analysis for approaching any justice-related issues in
education. In the debates over educational issues, critical pedagogy emerged as a
leading school of thought catering to different regimes of operations against
different forms of injustices and inequalities. The major field of operation has
been the imperatives and discontinuities produced by neoliberal economies and
global imperialism. Critical pedagogy as a discourse and practice has a wider
possibility of being applied to varied types of educational issues aimed at attaining
a justice-based practice. Although there have been issues concerning the
limitations and failures of critical pedagogy as a universal project, its significance
continues. The Gramscian trajectory within critical pedagogy can be captured as
a sequence as follows. There are multiple issues prevailing in the regime of
education, which are the outcome of power relations operating in its different
structures. This positioning of power must be understood in its particular context,
in a way that analyses how different subjectivities are produced in the regime as
the desired outcome and what the elements are that contribute to constructing
those oppressive structures. An analysis of an issue must at the end be aimed at
devising an alternative with regard to the subjective position of the receiver. The
practice of critical pedagogy never ought to be considered merely as a practice of
teaching in the classroom for a dialogic education. Indeed, it must be considered
as a political process of inquiry over the formal and informal relations of power
exercised in schooling and the entire process of education. In this way, Gramsci
offers more tools to expand the politics of critical engagement from classrooms to
larger spheres of society as actions of counter-hegemony, aiming at the liberation
of the masses from dehumanising practices of conservative and, undemocratic
models of capitalist educational systems throughout the world.
142 Review of Development and Change 24(1)

Acknowledgements
This article is a modified version of the paper titled “Interrogating Gramscian Project in
Critical Pedagogy: Towards a Philosophy of Praxis in Education” presented at Philosophy
of Education Seminar organized by Azim Premji University on 2014 March 29–April 2
held at Jaipur, India. I thank my PhD supervisor Prof. Arun Kumar Patnaik for his continu-
ous stimulation in developing this article and my thoughts as well. I also thank the review-
ers and my beloved comrades for their insightful comments and suggestions in improving
this manuscript.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, author-
ship and/or publication of this article.

Funding
The author received no financial support for the research, authorship and/or publication of
this article.

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