See discussions, stats, and author profiles for this publication at: https://www.researchgate.

net/publication/344285845

A Book Review Symposium: Henry A. Giroux (2020) On Critical Pedagogy [2 nd

Edition]. Bloomsbury Academic Publishing ISBN 0978-1-3501-4498-9

Research · September 2020

DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.10615.65444

CITATIONS READS

0 1,027

6 authors, including:

Sheila Macrine Francisco Javier Durán del Fierro

University of Massachusetts Dartmouth University College London
111 PUBLICATIONS 467 CITATIONS 13 PUBLICATIONS 36 CITATIONS

SEE PROFILE SEE PROFILE

All content following this page was uploaded by Francisco Javier Durán del Fierro on 17 September 2020.

The user has requested enhancement of the downloaded file.

A Book Review Symposium: Henry A. Giroux (2020) On Critical Pedagogy
[2nd Edition]. Bloomsbury Academic Publishing ISBN 0978-1-3501-4498-9

Alpesh Maisuria
University of the West of England, Bristol, UK
Brad Evans
University of Bath, Bath, UK
Francisco Duran Del Fierro
University College London, London, UK
Robert Jackson
Manchester Metropolitan University, Manchester, UK
Sheila Macrine
University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth, USA
Annette Rimmer
Community Radio producer and University of Manchester, Manchester, UK

Alpesh Maisuria, University of the West of England, Bristol, UK

Introductory remarks
Henry Giroux is a renowned public intellectual, author, and critical educator.
Giroux is recognised as one the architects of modern Critical Pedagogy. He
currently holds the Chair for Scholarship in the Public Interest and he is the
Paulo Freire Distinguished Scholar at McMaster University, Canada. In the
context of education and resistance, reference to the work of Henry Giroux is de
rigueur. He has been prolific: over 250 book chapters, 500 articles, numerous
international speeches, and 67 books – the latest is the second edition of the

432 | P a g e
A Book Review Symposium: Henry A. Giroux (2020) On Critical Pedagogy [2nd Edition]

hugely popular and influential On Critical Pedagogy, which is the subject of the
review here.

Henry Giroux is clearly a distinguished scholar, but for me Henry’s contribution

is something greater than academic intellectualism alone. Recently over lunch,
Henry impressed on me the necessity for educators to make their ideas
accessible and available for new audiences – in my view, without engaging a
critical mass of people, especially marginalised groups, change is either
impossible or short-lived. To prove the point of wide-engagment, after meeting
with me, he (with Brad Evans – one of the contributors here) was going to be
interviewed by Russell Brand for the podcast Under the Skin, which brings
serious discussion to his 2.3 million subscribers, most of whom are from a
demographic where critical pedagogy will strike a chord but will, most
probably, be unheard of. Henry has also been interviewed by Julian
Casablancas, the singer from the band The Strokes, which was featured in
Rolling Stone magazine highlighting critical social justice issues to a wider and
largely untapped audience, such as: big banks, the deficit in democracy, and the
dangers of corrupt journalism. This kind of organic intellectual work is crucial
because he’s able to speak directly to those people who can, and need to labour
to make struggle a centrepiece in their consciousness and actions.
Critical pedagogy has obvious appeal as a practical philosophy against
neoliberal capitalism. In this book, Giroux provides an elaborated definition and
conceptualisation of critical pedagogy. He does this by stating that critical
pedagogy provides the foundations for emancipatory education through
addressing:
• the expunging of criticality from the education system
• the rising tide of political authoritarianism
• the moral and political deficit, both, in society and in politics
• common sense assumption about the world and the self
433 | P a g e
Alpesh Maisuria, Brad Evans, Francisco Duran Del Fierro, Robert Jackson, Sheila Macrine & Annette Rimmer

It is clear for Giroux that politics needs to be pedagogical, and pedagogy needs
to be political. This diagnosis began in the 1970s, when Giroux was given a
copy of Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed while a high-school teacher.
With Freire, Giroux found himself with the language and theoretical lens to
account for the dangerous dismantling of education and society.
Soon after, he began collaborating with Freire, and took Freire’s ideas beyond
adult literacy education in post-colonial contexts (Gottesman, 2016), as did
Peter McLaren, and soon critical pedagogy was gaining wider prominence.
Importantly, Giroux recontextualised and nuanced Freire’s work for an
American audience where the masses, unlike those in developing nations, did
not/could not have consciousness of their own position in the stratified social
structure:

The alienation, exploitation, and domination to which Freire refers is certainly an

objective fact, but it is far from a subjective perception recognised by most
Americans. Not only the content and nature of domination needs to be
documented in this case, but the very fact of domination has to be proven to most
Americans (Giroux, 1981, p.136)

Giroux’s work has unquestionably been a cornerstone to struggle towards

remedying this situation, which allows for injustice to prevail. The book ought
to appeal widely, and this review symposium brings together an impressively
wide range of contributors to cast judgement on Giroux’s ideas in this latest
book, which is a compilation of essays spanning 30 years of writing. The
reviewers are specialists in their field from the USA, England, and Chile; and
also, from a range of disciplines, subject areas, and practices. They address the
overarching themes of the book that cuts through every essay: democracy,
authoritarianism, and hope.

434 | P a g e
A Book Review Symposium: Henry A. Giroux (2020) On Critical Pedagogy [2nd Edition]

The reviews begin with Brad Evans, who brings into focus the way that Giroux
presents the violence inherent in the history of capitalism through a sublime
aesthetic analogy using Gottfried Helnwein's chilling artwork. The image that
Evans uses holds immense provocation, where the observer cannot be relaxed,
and this is exactly what Evans sees as the provocation in Giroux’s account of
the world too. Unlike the other reviews in this symposium, Evans provides us
with a glimpse of Henry Giroux - the person – with whom he has a close critical
friendship. For Evans, Giroux does nothing less that than inspire – this is a word
that Francisco Duran Del Fierro also uses in his review. Duran Del Fierro
provides a summary account from each part of Giroux’s book, culminating with
three general observations: i) Giroux’s clarion call that education can and ought
to promote political critique and radicalism ii) but fomenting agency for
transformative action by knowledge alone is fraught iii) the new pedagogy
utilising online methods appears to be a progressive and democratic shift, but it
is imbued with positivist values that alienates and thus reinforces the dominant
hegemony of neoliberalism. Rob Jackson provides a forensic reading of the
ideas in Giroux’s book. Skilfully traversing his expertise of Gramsci, Jackson
scrutinises Giroux’s utilisation of Gramsci for servicing the argument for
promoting critical pedagogy. Jackson applauds Giroux for reclaiming Gramsci
from conservative usage, but the deployment of Gramsci would be more
productive for Giroux’s critical pedagogy if the concept of ‘good sense’ was
more thoroughly appreciated. Jackson values Giroux’s treatment of savage
capitalism and the neoliberal mentality, but Giroux’s claims of fascism may be
overstated. The review culminates in calling for an invigorated productive
synthesis of a Gramscian inspired critical pedagogy. Henry Giroux as an
inspiration and pioneer is also a common thread in Shelia Macrine’s review.
For Macrine, Giroux is more than an intellectual and academic, his work
coalesces the personal, public, and cultural for cultivating the necessity of hope
and possibility through pedagogy and education. Macrine appreciates Giroux’s

435 | P a g e
Alpesh Maisuria, Brad Evans, Francisco Duran Del Fierro, Robert Jackson, Sheila Macrine & Annette Rimmer

description that infers the killing of education’s soul. Giroux’s book posits a
much-needed antidote, at least to the point of promoting a recognition that civil
life matters and this can be shaped by agential action. Macrine also highlights
Giroux’s call for academics to have an active role for educating rather than
merely training, thus universities ought to be democracy building institutions.
Macrine’s review ends by explicating the increasing value of Giroux’s work for
today’s struggles. Similar to Duran Del Fierro and Macrine, Annette Rimmer
provides an important account of each section of the book. But unlike the
others, Rimmer comes at Girouxian critical pedagogy primarily from a
practitioner’s perspective. This is important because Giroux’s mission is to
facilitate those like Rimmer who work with marginalised groups, with a
pedagogy for social action. Despite giving only passing attention to feminism
and gender, Rimmer welcomes Giroux’s critical pedagogy noting that humans
who have been stripped of their species-being in the slaughter-house of
capitalism are unhappy robots suffering dire mental ill-health. Rimmer
highlights Giroux’s explication of the role and function of critical pedagogy to
countenance possibilities of a new nature, and through this comes optimism,
which for Rimmer, who is a cultural worker and educator, is the inspiration of
Giroux.

References
Giroux, H (1981) Ideology, Culture, and the Process of Schooling. Philadelphia: Temple
University Press.
Gottesman, I (2016) The Critical Turn in Education: From Marxist Critique to
Poststructuralist Feminism to Critical Theories of Race. New York, NY: Routledge

436 | P a g e
A Book Review Symposium: Henry A. Giroux (2020) On Critical Pedagogy [2nd Edition]

Brad Evans, University of Bath, Bath, UK

A Critical Friendship: I have a confession of sorts to make when writing this

review of Henry A. Giroux’s On Critical Pedagogy. No living intellectual has
had greater impact upon my work and thinking. I have had the distinct privilege
of writing a book and a number of projects with Henry, which has given me a
wonderful and privileged insight into his generosity of spirit and unrelenting
drive in the search for justice. I also consider him one of my closest friends. So,
in light of this, I think it’s fair to say the review is far from “objective” or
“neutral”. But how awful would it be if it was written that way?

The cover for Giroux’s 2nd edition features another of the brilliant artworks by
the Viennese artist Gottfried Helnwein (Aktion Sorgenkind) (above). Featuring
a blinded child on a rundown street, her hands are tied by a ribbon that reach
beyond the page. This image is perfect for a text that spans nearly half a century
of critical effort. This unseeing child is the counterpoint to the blinded Oedipus
437 | P a g e
Alpesh Maisuria, Brad Evans, Francisco Duran Del Fierro, Robert Jackson, Sheila Macrine & Annette Rimmer

who also shaped by the rubble of his times, knew his fate and had it mapped out
in advance. The ambiguity to the image is striking. Should we look upon it from
the Western gaze, invariably we would scan from left to right, hence witnessing
the child present yet puppeteered by a force that is invisible and beyond the
pale. All we can detect is the presence of some shadowy and crooked figure,
who appears to be controlling her very existence with sinister intent. Should
however we adopt the alternative movement, right to left, then we already note
the binds that come from the past, while placing the child central to our
concerns.

Helnwein’s child and Giroux’s work perfectly marry together in this aesthetic
and critical moment. This is a child who is conscious of being bound by the
violence of history. And yet still she strikes a defiant pose. Stood in the street,
with her knees already showing bruises and the traces of wounds, still she
refuses to give up hope and finds possibility to recover something of her spirit.
While her eyes may be covered, we get the sense she truly knows how to see the
world. As such she knows that we are the ones so often veiled and unwilling to
confront the intolerable.

The child remains truly symbolic for any viable conception of a critical
education, which is not simply tasked with learning from the past but has the
courage to bring thought to bear on the future. This is precisely what Giroux’s
book gives to us. Meticulously moving across the landscapes of disposability, it
exposes us to the violence of things that often remain hidden in plain sight.
Following in the spirit of the late Paolo Freire, what’s at stake in this book is not
simply about petty disputes over the technical details of good, efficient, or even
safe spaced education that has become a fetish for ideological purists. Revealing
to us most fully how education is always a form of political intervention, critical

438 | P a g e
A Book Review Symposium: Henry A. Giroux (2020) On Critical Pedagogy [2nd Edition]

pedagogy, like the critical child, may be beaten down, yet still it refuses to give
in and still it continues to have the courage to ask power to account for itself.
The monochromatic appearance of the image only adds to the drama, for the
untrained eye may look upon it in terms of the neutralisation of colour. There is
no neutrality here. Or if there has been an extraction of colour, that is precisely
what the dull forces of technocratic reason bring. But in these dark shadows –
the dark times that Giroux continues to discursively paint throughout the text,
that's where the optimism and hope can be found. Indeed, after reading the
book, we might even be forgiven for seeing the young child as the empowered
one.

That the cover image was produced back in early 1970s is also perfectly in
keeping with the book’s contents. Not only is this book a testament to a history
of unrelenting and unselfish historical labour. It foregrounds the importance of
historical testimony. The book in fact begins with a mediation on “the death of
history”, forcing us to come face to face once again with the amnesia of certain
claims to progress or what Giroux brilliantly terms elsewhere the violence of
organised forgetting. There is no viable conception of the political without a
considered understanding of the past. And it’s in his ability to act as a
transgressive witness, where Giroux is at his best.

I do often wonder how Giroux maintains the energy and commitment for the
plight of others. What is termed in one of the later chapters in the book “the
politics of academic labour”, we might recall to also be a true labour of love.
This book like Giroux’s wider corpus continues to give and yet asks for nothing
in return. He continues to produce across the decades, driven by the rather
simple premise that no human should be disposable. And it’s in this sense we
can see that love is a political category. For it gives to others yet demands no
material enrichment in return.

439 | P a g e
Alpesh Maisuria, Brad Evans, Francisco Duran Del Fierro, Robert Jackson, Sheila Macrine & Annette Rimmer

I am in no doubt that Helnwein’s image is meant to capture both the tragedy and
love of existence. And like what the bandages conceal on the young child, these
are the issues that course through the veins of this book. Such vitality should not
be underestimated. On Critical Pedagogy is vital is so many ways. It is all about
the blood we don't see spilling on the streets. It is all about the attempts to blind
us from the truth. It is all about the shadows of history. And yet it is also all
about defiance in the face of authoritarianism and the forces that continue to
annihilate us on a daily basis. It is, in short, all about recovering the critical
imagination.

I know in the short space allocated here that it is impossible to do justice to

Giroux’s tremendous work. This was written out of respect, out of love and out
of friendship for a public intellectual truly worthy of that name. But don't take
my word for it. Take hold of the book, feel the weight of its historical reckoning
in your hands, reflect for a while on the astounding art of Helnwein, then
venture into the depths of the human condition and the need for an educated
escape. Perhaps then, like myself, you will also find a critical friend in Henry
Giroux.

Francisco Duran Del Fierro, University College London, UK

The defence of democracy as a form of social and political life involves putting
into practice a range of strategies across different sites. Henry Giroux’s book
offers us one deeply grounded in the classical post-Marxist tradition coupled
with a variety of radical theories. In this book, Giroux brings together a myriad
of critical approaches in order to propose a pedagogy based on political agency,
critical deliberation, and social responsibility. In opposition to “neoliberal
pedagogy” and increasing authoritarian threats worldwide, Giroux offers an

440 | P a g e
A Book Review Symposium: Henry A. Giroux (2020) On Critical Pedagogy [2nd Edition]

extremely novel understanding to rethink the role of pedagogy and expand the
notion of critical pedagogy at all levels of education. In this sense, Giroux is
troubled by the problem of how pedagogy can become political in a way that
schools and universities, teachers and scholars as well as teaching and learning
experiences, might reflect the values and practices of democracy, grasped as
political life. Thus, Giroux’s critical pedagogy is conceived of as “a moral and
political practice” (p. 1), “as a way to resist” (p. 1), as a “transformative
practice” (p. 186) that takes place not only in schools and universities but also
in the wider society. Hence, critical pedagogy entails thinking and acting
differently in order to contest “the dismantling of education’s critical capacity”
(p. 1) and the emergence of a “politics of authoritarianism” (p. 1). But it also
reminds us that critique involves imagining new ways of living in society.
Part 1 begins by criticising the degree to which “the culture of positivism” has
influenced the practice of pedagogy through “the lens of a focused social and
educational problem, the alleged loss of interest in history” (p. 20), particularly
in the U.S. The point he is making here, is that the crisis in “historical
consciousness” undermines the role of theory and knowledge as a form of
liberation from dogma and of politics as a way of reimagining and changing the
future. Instead, the positivist approach puts into practice the notion of
“objectivity”, which represents “the separation of values from knowledge and
methodological inquiry” (p. 27). The prevailing of science and objectivism in
curriculum development entails the promotion of concepts and practices
associated with “reliability, consistency, and quantitative predictions” (p. 36),
thus turning knowledge into a measurable and impersonal objects. Therefore, he
smoothly asserts that the attempts to ignore the role of history constitute “an
assault on thinking itself” (p. 21). This diagnosis leads him to the work of
Gramsci to better understand the relationship between ideological hegemony
and critical pedagogy. The keystone is to pay attention to “how alternative
culture spheres might be transformed into sites of struggle and resistance” (p.

441 | P a g e
Alpesh Maisuria, Brad Evans, Francisco Duran Del Fierro, Robert Jackson, Sheila Macrine & Annette Rimmer

54), within which pedagogical practices play a crucial and significant role. In
this regard, Giroux’s interpretation of Gramsci’s work reminds us that schooling
is always part of a broader political and social sphere, but it also remarks that
“everyday life and the formation of power” (p. 71) depend on the pedagogical
force of culture.

Part 2 links critical pedagogy to the emergence of a fleeting and disposable

culture based on the interplay between desire and fear. The emergence of these
ideologies erases the values of democracy, social justice and social
responsibility. Bluntly put, this situation has led to the priority of the economy
over education. The example that Giroux offers is clear enough: whereas the
financial sector has been bailed out by the U.S. government, the education
sector has been underfunded. Similarly, it gives rise to a new individual subject
–the youth– who is now completely transformed into either a mere consumer or
a “perpetrator of violence” (p. 111). As a result, this priority brings along a new
type of morality whose essence is now associated with “freedom and choice”,
“punishment and fear” (p. 108) and “corporate time” (p. 231). This entire
situation is fairly problematic to Giroux, who tirelessly argues for education as
the locus of struggle and resistance, as the sphere of fostering democracy in its
various forms. He insists on this role of education because too many youths
have now become disposable. At this point, Giroux raises the following
question: “What kind of country have we become that we cannot protect our
children or offer them even the most basic requirements to survive?” (p. 107).
The answer that he offers is thought-provoking: the crisis of youth –who are the
embodiment of the future–, reflects the crisis of democracy and as a
consequence the demise of the social contract promoted by liberalism.
One way to address this situation, Giroux points out, is promoting a “politics of
educated hope” (p. 140) based on the assumption that “a substantive democracy
cannot exist without educated citizens” (p. 157). Hope, as Freire puts it, is an

442 | P a g e
A Book Review Symposium: Henry A. Giroux (2020) On Critical Pedagogy [2nd Edition]

“act of moral imagination that enabled progressive educators and others to think
otherwise in order to act otherwise” (p. 186). Having this in mind, Part 3
concentrates on the role of education as a “cultural pedagogical practice that
takes place across multiple sites” (p. 162). That is to say, education not only
refers to formal institutions but also to new sites of “public pedagogy” and
“culture” that operate within a wide variety of formats. Drawing on the work of
Cornelius Castoriadis and Raymond Williams, Giroux makes a radical
connection between democracy, political agency and pedagogy. Education, in
this sense, provides the “capacities, knowledge, skills, and social relations
through which individuals recognize themselves as social and political agents”
(p. 163) inasmuch as it is a site for democratic struggle. Similarly, Giroux takes
up Paulo Freire’s approach to complement his analysis of pedagogy as the
foundation of political agency and to recognise the connection between
knowledge, authority, power and freedom.

Part 4 focuses on how critical pedagogy can be promoted under the rise of new
forms of fascism, populism, authoritarianism, and so on, that damage those
institutions that make democracy possible. As Giroux posits, “democratic
institutions such as the independent media, schools, the legal system, certain
financial institutions, and higher education are under siege worldwide” (p. 217).
In this context, education runs the risk of becoming a tool to deploy the values
and interests of the right-wing. However, Giroux’s perspective underlines that
now, more than ever before is time to make education central to politics in order
to resist the emergence of the movements unleashed by neoliberalism. That is to
say, the way to defend democracy from these threats is having more informed
and critically engaged citizens, meaning that education –or political pedagogy–
both in its symbolic and institutional form, plays a crucial and significant role in
promoting civic courage and fostering public values. The last chapter of this
book, which is an interview, provides Giroux’s theoretical influences and a

443 | P a g e
Alpesh Maisuria, Brad Evans, Francisco Duran Del Fierro, Robert Jackson, Sheila Macrine & Annette Rimmer

view regarding the possibilities and challenges of critical pedagogy in these

uncertain times. The point that he conveys here is one of hope for educators
worldwide, that is, he underlines that they must keep fighting to connect
pedagogy, political agency and democracy in a way that new possible worlds
can be envisaged and that an alternative future is possible.

Having highlighted the main issues posited by Giroux, now I would like to raise
three considerations. Firstly, Giroux’s book reminds us once again of the
importance of promoting radical thoughts and practices, particularly in
academia. The idea of resistance seems to have been captured by “corporate
time” and the culture of “playing the game”. His critique on the role of
academics and educators in fostering a more radical pedagogy is provoking:
“The time has come for cultural studies theorists to distinguish professional
caution from political cowardice and recognize that their obligations extend
beyond deconstructing texts or promoting a culture of questioning” (p. 170). In
this sense, it is important to bear in mind that academic life not only rests upon
knowledge production but also is linked to ethics and that both are closely
interwoven. Giroux provides a clear and precise understanding of the challenges
taking place between knowledge and ethics.

Secondly, it is worth noting that Giroux seems to be aware of the difficulties in

relating education and political action in a simple way. It is evident that
knowing something does not translate immediately into action, but “it is an
essential step towards opening the space of resistance towards authority” (p.
169). In this regard, I would say that political action requires well-educated
people in order to participate in democracy and to resist the rise of different
forms of fascism, but it is far away from being its point of departure. Political
action is also triggered by lived experiences that come from structured
inequalities, that are, experiences of pain, suffering, and injustice under a

444 | P a g e
A Book Review Symposium: Henry A. Giroux (2020) On Critical Pedagogy [2nd Edition]

system of oppression and domination like neoliberalism. These experiences

drive the way in which different forms of resistance emerge and how political
action can be articulated.

Finally, it is possible to assert that a new form of pedagogy has arrived within
and across schools and higher education institutions based seemingly on more
democratic and transparent practices of learning: online platforms (the Covid-19
pandemic showed this situation clearly). However, it seems to me that this
pedagogy indeed reinforces the culture of positivism posited by Giroux in the
sense that it normalises all the aspects of teaching and learning. In addition, this
new pedagogy no longer asks about what to teach, which is exclusively
political, but about how to teach, which is ultimately technical and apparently
neutral. In promoting transparency online learning imposes a sort of schooling
that ends up complying with the promise of neoliberalism: individuals
completely separated from each other. We must struggle against these forms of
teaching and Giroux’s book gives us the theoretical tools and inspiration to do
so.

Robert Jackson, Manchester Metropolitan University, Manchester, UK

In these essays, Henry Giroux makes an impassioned call for a critical

understanding of education.† Eschewing conceptions of teaching as a
“disinterested method” free of politics, he suggests instead that educators and
cultural workers, as public intellectuals, should view their practices as entailing
the responsibility to nurture an “educated hope” among learners (p.140). This
critical pedagogy, which makes both the “political more pedagogical and the
pedagogical more political” (p.143), is conceived, after Raymond Williams, as a
mode of “permanent education” that extends beyond formal schooling (p.156).

445 | P a g e
Alpesh Maisuria, Brad Evans, Francisco Duran Del Fierro, Robert Jackson, Sheila Macrine & Annette Rimmer

With eloquent outrage, Giroux recounts the injustices of the racialised and
gendered forms of oppression and class-based exploitation that underwrite the
‘hidden curriculum’ in public and higher education. His more recent essays
explore, in the North American context, the proliferation of not-so-hidden forms
of penal and militarised social control that have arisen in the wake of state
policies of deregulation and privatisation.

Giroux describes the unrelenting assault of market forces on the lives of

marginalised youth and those groups deemed ‘disposable’ by the de-humanising
calculus of the neoliberal economy in the US. He dissects the logics of
punishment and structural racism that have proliferated under the auspices of
both Democratic and Republican administrations. Beneath this bleak tableau,
Giroux affirms the possibility of resistance to the erosion of democratic public
spheres. He identifies education, both in a formal and in a broader sense, as a
key site of struggle, where students can imagine transformative new languages
to contest these forms of domination, enabling them “to think and act
differently” (p.14). Through the development of an “oppositional utopianism”
(p.141), Giroux makes the case that educators and cultural workers, in the
classroom, the university, and beyond, can empower citizens to construct and
sustain participatory and substantive democratic societies.

Well-known concepts of the Italian thinker Antonio Gramsci feature

prominently among the theoretical resources mobilised by Giroux for this
project. Giroux employs a range of keywords drawn from a Gramscian lexicon,
including the notions of hegemony, subalternity, common sense, consent,
organic intellectuals, and civil society. He makes significant reference to
Gramsci’s insight that “every relationship of ‘hegemony’ is necessarily an
educational relationship” (p.55; See Gramsci, 1971, p.350). This thought
informs Giroux’s perspective, which explores “the connection between

446 | P a g e
A Book Review Symposium: Henry A. Giroux (2020) On Critical Pedagogy [2nd Edition]

democracy, political agency and pedagogy” (p.162), by combining Gramsci’s

ideas with those of other thinkers, such as Williams, Cornelius Castoriadis, and
Zygmunt Bauman.

In chapter two, Giroux takes issue with the appropriation of Gramsci’s

pedagogical ideas by conservative writers, in particular Harold Entwistle and
E.D. Hirsch. Giroux argues that Entwistle and Hirsch take Gramsci’s views out
of context and distort them for their own purposes, namely to justify a return to
forms of rote learning and standardised curricula, thereby reinforcing a
deference to authority among students. The origins of this conservative reading
lie in Gramsci’s polemical response to the 1923 educational reform act in Italy
named after neoidealist philosopher and fascist Giovanni Gentile. Gramsci’s
criticisms of the Gentile reforms in his Prison Notebooks, and by extension of
their provenance in the ideas of liberal idealist Benedetto Croce, are an attempt
to disentangle the reforms’ rhetoric, endorsing a superficial notion of ‘active
education’, from their reality, which deprived subaltern and peasant populations
of core literacy and communication skills necessary to challenge Mussolini’s
regime.

Giroux seeks to reclaim Gramsci’s legacy from such uses that run contrary to
the “critical and emancipatory possibilities” of his wider political project (p.67).
Gramsci’s reflections on the theme of education certainly highlight the
discipline required for intellectuals emerging from subaltern positions to acquire
the skills of grammar and logic necessary to develop an effective and
autonomous critical thought. However, Giroux reminds us that Gramsci’s
emphasis on learning as work aims to raise the general cultural level of the
population, rather than to entrench a hierarchical social order. In this sense,
Gramsci’s ‘philosophy of praxis’, the renewal of Marxism and of philosophy
itself with the aim of “renovating and making ‘critical’ an already existing

447 | P a g e
Alpesh Maisuria, Brad Evans, Francisco Duran Del Fierro, Robert Jackson, Sheila Macrine & Annette Rimmer

activity” (Gramsci, 1971, p.331, p.464), resonates with critical pedagogy’s

emphasis on the intimate relation between self-change and social
transformation, and between “knowledge production” and “self-production”
(p.143).

While Giroux is correct to reassert the ‘critical’ spirit of Gramsci’s project

against conservative readings, revisiting the complex and variegated meanings
that emerge from Gramsci’s writings could enrich Giroux’s own use of
Gramscian concepts. For example, Giroux treats ‘common sense’ – the taken
for granted beliefs and practices of each social stratum that, while continually in
flux, both reinforce and are engendered by a particular order – primarily in the
pejorative connotation of a struggle against its conformist inertia. Giroux
emphasises the project of “unsettling” common sense (p.133), referring less to
the immanent role of ‘common sense’ in the creation of a “new conception of
the world” (Gramsci, 1971, p.465). For Gramsci, the ‘critical’ project to
supersede ‘common sense’ must itself become a more coherent ‘common
sense’, or, in other terms, a critically aware ‘good sense’ (see Liguori, 2016,
Ch.6; Crehan, 2016, Ch.3). While Giroux does not claim to employ concepts in
a strictly Gramscian manner, this constructive aspect of ‘common sense’,
arguably dominant in the Notebooks, could complement Giroux’s use of the
term, as it allows Gramsci to contend with the persistently ideological status of
alternatives that replace the status quo. Despite Alistair Davidson’s argument
that the issue of “how good sense is created out of common sense” is under-
theorised by Gramsci himself (Davidson, 2008, p.78), the Prison Notebooks
continue to have much to offer Giroux’s productive synthesis of Gramscian
concepts with more recent critical theories.

Giroux’s foundational contribution to critical pedagogy, understood as

consciousness-raising (thinking differently) as a means to foment personal and

448 | P a g e
A Book Review Symposium: Henry A. Giroux (2020) On Critical Pedagogy [2nd Edition]

social transformation (acting differently), suggests the potential for substantial

dialogue with resources that have emerged from the recent season of Gramsci
studies (e.g. Liguori, 2015; Cospito, 2016; Meta, 2019). This exchange could
present further means to mediate between the agents of emancipatory social
change and the circumstances confronting them, and to avoid the ‘subjective’
aspect of the critical project of overcoming ‘common sense’ (the ‘optimism of
the will’, if you like) becoming separated from the ‘objective’ analysis of the
relations of forces (the realist ‘pessimism of the intellect’). Gramsci’s study of
the history of intellectuals (organic and traditional) provides a rich account of
their mediating role as organisers on the cultural terrain (with enduring
significance for educators). Gramsci develops the concrete determinations of
this mediation through his creative rereading of Machiavelli’s politics and the
figure of the ‘modern Prince’. As Peter Thomas has shown, this is not simply a
code word for an existing political party, but for “the fusion of a new type of
political party and oppositional culture that would gather together intellectuals
(organisers) and the masses in a new political and intellectual practice”
(Thomas, 2009, p.437). Thus, Gramsci situates the emancipatory transformation
of ‘common sense’ in a struggle between competing hegemonies. The
constructive aspect of ‘common sense’ reflects the fact that there is no
immediately non-ideological vantage point ‘outside’ of this terrain of struggles.
A key resource for explaining the recalcitrance of our times to Utopian projects,
of the type that Giroux proposes, is Gramsci’s analytically fertile politico-
historical understanding of ‘passive revolution’. Recent publications (e.g. Mayo,
2015; Pizzolato and Holst, 2017) have alluded to the potential for critical
pedagogy to engage with Gramsci’s conception of ‘passive revolution’. This
concept explains the ongoing capacity of ruling class hegemony, despite
recurrent crises, to disaggregate subaltern initiatives and to absorb and deflect
subversive energies that challenge the existing social order. Gramsci develops
this notion of ‘passive revolution’ from his account of the Risorgimento and of

449 | P a g e
Alpesh Maisuria, Brad Evans, Francisco Duran Del Fierro, Robert Jackson, Sheila Macrine & Annette Rimmer

fascism in Italy. Gramsci’s reflections on these ongoing molecular processes

that (re-)constitute subaltern groups as passive have great explanatory power for
those facing the ‘morbid symptoms’ of the twenty-first century. I would argue
that following the trajectory of this analysis today might help us to discern the
most deep-seated obstacles to the reception and effectivity of critical
pedagogy’s oppositional project.

Gramsci’s analysis thus allows us to examine Giroux’s assertion, in this new

edition of his text, that the United States under Trump is a form of “neoliberal
fascism” (p.225). Giroux argues that neoliberalism creates the conditions for a
new fascist politics while also being “intrinsically fascist” itself (p.199). While
he conceives fascism as characterised by various aspects – as emerging from
nihilism and despair, as breeding cynicism, as part of an anti-democratic turn,
involving, following Arendt, a ‘fear of judging’ –, Giroux’s characterisation
hinges on the concepts of ‘illiteracy’ and ‘ignorance’. On the one hand,
ignorance is no longer a simple ‘lack of knowledge’, it is rather a Lacanian
“passion for ignorance” and “refusal to know” (p.94), becoming “the primary
organizing principle of American society” (p.200). On the other, illiteracy takes
on an active and manufactured form, as a “war” against “language, meaning,
thinking, and the capacity for critical thought” (p.200), corresponding to the
new forms of right-wing populism and authoritarianism that have proliferated in
the digital era.

Giroux provides valuable descriptions of the consequences of the neoliberal

politics of the extreme ‘centre’ (Ali, 2015), which “has produced immense
misfortune through its elevation of a savage capitalism to a national ideal that
governs not only the market but all of social life” (p.248). However, as
Christian Fuchs argues in his review of Giroux’s Terror of the Unforeseen, “the
existence of political leaders with fascist characters, even if they communicate

450 | P a g e
A Book Review Symposium: Henry A. Giroux (2020) On Critical Pedagogy [2nd Edition]

fascist ideology, does not automatically imply the existence of a fascist society”
(Fuchs, 2019). For Fuchs, in order for “a fascist society to come into existence,
these leaders need to call forth collective political practices that result in the full
institutionalization of authoritarianism” (ibid.). While the sharpening
contradictions of the decomposing neoliberal order are a reminder that fascism
is not a phenomenon confined to the past, as recent analyses have shown
(Palheta, 2018), Giroux oversteps the mark in suggesting that such tendencies
within neoliberalism’s crisis mark the necessary advent of a fascist society.
Nevertheless, his insightful account of the logic of despair animating
contemporary US society reveals much of value about the dark consequences of
the neoliberal mentality.

Gramsci’s reflections on ‘passive revolution’ and the molecular changes in

Italian society that led to the emergence of fascism offer a line of research that
can illuminate further these troubling developments in our own times. They link
the struggle between hegemonies to an understanding of the integral role played
by education in hegemonic relationships. Giroux’s early mobilisation of
Gramscian concepts in the service of a radical critical pedagogy helped to open
a Gramscian pathway in critical education studies. Giroux demonstrates that
revisiting Gramsci’s thought, in dialogue with more recent critical thinkers, can
articulate the coordinates of the ‘reciprocal siege’ at work in the field of
education, between the forms of domination undermining the democratic
promise of public and higher education, and the transformative praxis nurtured
by critical pedagogy. Deepening this engagement with Gramsci today, by
pursuing this interaction between Gramsci studies and pedagogical thought,
offers the potential, I would argue, of articulating the catalysing fusion between
the “educated hope” (p.140) pioneered by Giroux and the movements among
subaltern groups towards a more critically aware ‘common sense’.

451 | P a g e
Alpesh Maisuria, Brad Evans, Francisco Duran Del Fierro, Robert Jackson, Sheila Macrine & Annette Rimmer

† I would like to thank Anne Freeland and Marieke Mueller for their comments
on a draft of this review.

References
Ali, T. (2015) The Extreme Centre: A Warning. London: Verso.
Cospito, G. (2016) The Rhythm of Thought in Gramsci. Leiden: Brill.
Crehan, K. (2016) Gramsci’s Common Sense. Durham: Duke.
Davidson, A. (2008) “The Uses and Abuses of Gramsci.” Thesis Eleven. Number 95.
(November): pp.68–94.
Fuchs, C. (2019) “Henry A. Giroux and the Culture of Neoliberal Fascism.” Los Angeles
Review of Books (12 August) https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/henry-a-giroux-and-
the-culture-of-neoliberal-fascism [Accessed 7 June 2020]
Gramsci, A. (1971) Selections from the Prison Notebooks. Edited by Q. Hoare and G.
Nowell-Smith. London: Lawrence and Wishart.
Liguori, G. (2015) Gramsci’s Pathways. Leiden: Brill.
Mayo, P. (2015) Hegemony and Education under Neoliberalism: Insights from Gramsci.
New York/London: Routledge.
Meta, C. (2019) Il soggetto e l’educazione in Gramsci. Formazione dell'uomo e teoria della
personalita. Rome: Bourdeaux edizioni.
Palheta, U. (2018) La possibilité du fascisme: France, la trajectoire du désastre. Paris: La
Découverte.
Pizzolato, N. and J.D. Holst. (2017) Antonio Gramsci: A Pedagogy to Change the World.
Cham: Springer.
Thomas, P. (2009) The Gramscian Moment: Philosophy, Hegemony and Marxism. Leiden:
Brill.

Sheila Macrine, University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth, USA

This new book is a welcome addition to Henry Giroux’s prolific life’s work. In
the introduction, Giroux writes that early on he recognized that critical
pedagogy, as a moral and political practice, does more than emphasize the
importance of critical analysis and moral judgments. Rather, it provides tools to
unsettle common-sense assumptions, theorize matters of self and social agency,
and engage the ever-changing demands and promises of a democratic polity
(p.1).

452 | P a g e
A Book Review Symposium: Henry A. Giroux (2020) On Critical Pedagogy [2nd Edition]

Needless to say, Giroux stands as one of the most influential, living public
intellectuals today. His sustained impact can be traced back to a range of
theorists extending from Gramsci and the Frankfurt School, to Paulo Freire,
Susan Sontag, and Zygmunt Bauman. Recognized as a gifted writer, educator,
philosopher, and a cultural critic, he was named as: one of the top ‘Public
Intellectuals’ in America in 2002, as one of the top Fifty Modern Thinkers on
Education: From Piaget to the Present as part of Routledge’s Key Guides
Publication Series, and in 2007 he was named as one of the “12 Canadians
Changing the Way We Think” by the Toronto Star.

In discussing Giroux’s work, Svi Shapiro (2007) writes that Giroux has been
one of the more important theorists who addresses how the social spaces for
dissent have become smaller, as individuals’ lives are turned inwards towards
private goals rather than shared concerns. In On Critical Pedagogy, Giroux,
indeed, takes up this commitment by expanding the breadth of his earlier work.
In doing so, he reinforces Shapiro’s claim that:

Giroux’s brilliance as a critical theorist is not (never) compromised…his

theoretical insights are fully amplified by his explorations of the way daily life,
public policy, and political decisions have coalesced to produce an increasingly
one-dimensional culture” (2007, p. 1).

In essence, Giroux proves that he is not simply an engaged intellectual, but an

intellectual whose work has been dedicated to salvaging the public sphere
within, and for an inclusive democracy. While a fierce cultural critic, he
constantly reflects and advocates for Critical Pedagogy’s ideals of hope and
possibility.

Giroux states right up front that all of the chapter essays share a common

453 | P a g e
Alpesh Maisuria, Brad Evans, Francisco Duran Del Fierro, Robert Jackson, Sheila Macrine & Annette Rimmer

belief that:

Education is fundamental to democracy and that no democratic society can

survive without a formative culture shaped by pedagogical practices capable of
creating the conditions for producing citizens who are critical, self-reflective,
knowledgeable, and willing to make moral judgments and act in a socially
responsible way (Giroux, 2020, p.2).

The book consists of an Introduction, and 5 sections comprising 11

chapters which cover over 30 years of his work through present day.
Interestingly, the earlier chapters still hold up in their applicability to
today’s attacks on the nature and condition of public and higher education,
today facing the very same criticisms first launched against critical
education in the 1970s and 1980s—in the name of ‘educational reform’. In
his Introduction, he argues that, “Three decades ago, it was precisely the
dismantling of education’s critical capacity in conjunction with the
emergence of a politics of authoritarianism that motivated my involvement
in the field of education, and critical pedagogy in particular” (2020, p.3).
Giroux adds that the university, and education in general, face a growing
number of problems, including diminishing federal and state funding, the
incursion of corporate power, a galloping commercialization, privatization,
and the growing influence of neoliberalism. While the university, as
cultural critic Edward Said (1994) insisted, is the one public space
available to real alternative intellectual practices: no other institution like it
exists anywhere else in the world today on such a scale (p.541). Yet to
many, the encroachment of anti-democratic challenges contributes to what
Hannah Arendt (1964) once called ‘dark times’ — a period in which the
public realm has lost the power of illumination. In this new book, Henry
Giroux provides one of the most comprehensive accounts of the
multifaceted attack on both academic freedom, the autonomy of the
454 | P a g e
A Book Review Symposium: Henry A. Giroux (2020) On Critical Pedagogy [2nd Edition]

university, and the hollowing-out of schooling.

Giroux begins the five sections with Pedagogy as Cultural Politics by building
the background to On Critical Pedagogy and examining the attacks on
education. He also takes up the cultural and radical pedagogy of Gramsci, as
well as critical pedagogy’s space in the politics of globalization. He is
particularly interested in what he calls the war on youth, the corporatization of
higher education, the politics of neoliberalism, the assault on civic literacy and
the collapse of public memory, public pedagogy, the educative nature of
politics, and the rise of various youth movements across the globe. In fact, it is
Giroux’s assertion that ‘public pedagogy’ can be used as a powerful resource
for engaging people in robust forms of dialogue and activism. He notes that, “a
public pedagogy now generally functions to limit the instruments for complex
and critical reasoning” (Giroux, 2005, p. xxii). In the second section, Critical
Pedagogy and the Politics of Youth, he analyses the increasingly empirical
orientation of teaching, focusing on the culture of positivism and the
disposability of youth. He then turns to Neoliberalism, Public Pedagogy, and
the Legacy of Paulo Freire, where he explicates the threat of neoliberalism and
the responsive role of Public Pedagogy and the promise of Critical Pedagogy.
He writes that there are increasing attempts by both the right-wing and liberal
interests to reduce schooling to techno-rational training and reducing students to
consumers. Here he focuses on the legacy of Paulo Freire, and issues a
fundamental challenge to educators, public intellectuals, and others who believe
in the promise of radical democracy.

Giroux maintains that the link between schooling and democracy has been lost
because the American public has been convinced that education should focus on
job training, competitive market advantage, ‘patriotic correctness’, and the
labour needs of the security state. He argues that the resultant decoupling of the

455 | P a g e
Alpesh Maisuria, Brad Evans, Francisco Duran Del Fierro, Robert Jackson, Sheila Macrine & Annette Rimmer

university its obligations to public service and community life is both caused
and reinforced by political cynicism and scepticism about education. And that
critical thought itself is under attack in the public sphere as right-wing
ideological zealots, Trumpsters, and Christian fundamentalists that promote
anti-intellectualism. This rigid moralism is fuelled by a deep bias against
dissent, appeals to reason, dialogue, and secular humanism. Giroux posits that
educators have the difficult task of fostering scholarship that enables students to
engage in debate and dialogue about pressing social problems: students must
understand not only that civic life matters, but also that they can shape it.
Echoing John Dewey’s insistence that democracy needs to be reborn in each
generation and that education is its midwife, Giroux maintains that academics
and others must wage a struggle over the meaning and purpose of the university
as a ‘public good’—that is, as an institution central to educating students to live
in a democracy. Students should be educated rather than merely trained in
instrumental skills. This means that educators should foster critical engagement
and dialogue while helping students connect knowledge and power, critical
arguments, and social and civic responsibility. Academics themselves also need
to connect their scholarship to public life, fight to protect their jobs and address
the often-exploitative conditions under which graduate students labour, and
oppose the creeping privatization of the university.

On Critical Pedagogy is a book that is filled with passion and insight, and
should be read by anyone who wants to understand and prepare for the dangers
and opportunities of political struggle in the here and now, as well as in the
future. Revolutionary thinker, Henry Giroux helps us understand why we must
refuse to equate capitalism and democracy, or to normalize greed or accept
individualism as the highest form of human life. To help us to better understand
these threats, Giroux delineates how neoliberalism, for the past 40 years, has
been paving a path to neo-fascism, that will have a distinctively contemporary

456 | P a g e
A Book Review Symposium: Henry A. Giroux (2020) On Critical Pedagogy [2nd Edition]

flavour, yet will be just as destructive as fascisms of the past. With a resurgence
of activism in the form of protest and strikes, (e.g.., #MeToo, Black Lives
Matter and the recent Teachers’ Strikes in Chicago, Arizona, Colorado and Los
Angeles-to name a few). Giroux proposes an international social movement
that joins together various modes of resistance to illuminate a democratic
renewal, and proves himself, once again, as one of the great public intellectuals
of our time.

In sum, Giroux calls on all public intellectuals to take action and to develop
democratic emancipatory projects that challenge neoliberalism’s power,
dominance and oppression, and to defend democracy, democratic public life and
the public sphere. In response, academics, scholars, and activists are asked to be
seen and to see themselves as public intellectuals who provide an indispensable
service to the world, and to resist the narrow confines of academic labour by
becoming multi-literate in a global democracy in ways that not only allow
access to new information and technologies but also enable us to become
border-crossers (Giroux, 2004, 2020; Macrine, 2011).

Certainly, among the great thinkers in history, Giroux’s hungry mind, insightful
analyses, cultural critiques and prodigious scholarship are his defining
characteristics. Over the past three decades, Giroux’s intelligence, sensibility
and dynamic writings have all helped to shape our understandings and beliefs in
democracy, culture, the public sphere, education, schooling, teachers, and
youth. As evidence in this book, Henry Giroux’s influence will continue to be
present in many of our existing practices, institutions of higher education, and in
the basic assumptions about ourselves and the world we think we know. They
say that the truest measure of genius is whether a person’s work resonates
throughout the ages. It goes without saying that Giroux’s legacy will be felt for
generations to come. This book, On Critical Pedagogy, will introduce new

457 | P a g e
Alpesh Maisuria, Brad Evans, Francisco Duran Del Fierro, Robert Jackson, Sheila Macrine & Annette Rimmer

readers to his genius, and for those of us who are familiar with his work, it will
give us a chance to revisit and celebrate his previous writings, as well as his
prescient new works in these uncertain times.

References
Arendt, H. (1964). Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil . New York :
Penguin, 1964
Giroux, H. A. (2001a). Theory and resistance in education: Towards pedagogy for the
opposition. Westport, Connecticut: Bergin & Garvey.
Giroux, H. A. (2001b). Stealing innocence: Corporate culture’s war on children. New York,
NY: Palgrave Macmillan.
Giroux, H. A. (2004). Cultural studies and the politics of public pedagogy: Making the
political more pedagogical. Parallax, (10)2, 73-89.
Giroux, H. A. (2005). Introduction: Democracy’s promise and education’s challenge. In
Giroux, H. A. Schooling and the struggle for public life: Democracy’s promise and
educational challenge (2nd Ed.). (pp. xi-xxxviii).Boulder: Paradigm Publishers.
Giroux, H.A. (2007). The University in Chains: Confronting the Military-Industrial-
Academic Complex. Boulder, Colo.: Paradigm Publishers.
Giroux, H.A. (2010). Youth in a Suspect Society: Democracy or Disposability? NY: Palgrave
Macmillan.
Giroux, H.A. (2020). On Critical Pedagogy. London: The Bloomsbury Group.
https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/on-critical-pedagogy-9781441116222/
Harvey, D. (2007) . Brief History of Neoliberalism. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press
Macrine, S.L. (2011) The War on Youth: An Essay Review. Education Review, 14(7).
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/269995067_War_on_Youth-
_An_Essay_Review
Shapiro, S. (2007). America on the edge: Henry Giroux on politics, culture, and education. .
Teachers College Record, January 29, 2007.
http://www.tcrecord.org/content.asp?contentid=12938
Said, Edward. (1994). Representations of the Intellectual. New York: Pantheon.Giroux, H. A.
(2001a). Theory and resistance in education: Towards pedagogy for the opposition.
Westport, Connecticut: Bergin & Garvey.

Annette Rimmer, University of Manchester, Manchester, UK

In his introduction, Giroux offers reminders that the fundamental obligations of

critical pedagogy are to unsettle common sense assumptions and disrupt the

458 | P a g e
A Book Review Symposium: Henry A. Giroux (2020) On Critical Pedagogy [2nd Edition]

notion of education as the shameless reproduction of inequalities and, in his

words, “cheerful robots” (p.1).

In this second edition, he re-establishes education as a cultural, political and

moral practice, duty bound to arouse students and community members into
social action. He rethinks radical pedagogy for modernity, for example,
Gramsci’s organic intellectuals, or permanent persuaders have new potential for
their work outside of academia. For practitioners like me, working with
marginal groups, Giroux, Freire, hooks and others have supported us to reframe
pedagogy, using non-traditional sites of learning “as part of a broader effort to
expand the sources of resistance and the dynamics of democratic struggle”
(p.73).

In subsequent chapters, Giroux laments the corporate driven notion of learning

where (even in the aftermath of global financial crisis), globalised market forces
and their reductive model of education, dominate. Emerging evidence shows
that the robots are not so happy; mental ill health, especially among young
people, is spiralling.

Having re-set the scene, this new edition moves to consider the resurrection of
the discourses of hatred and a new kind of fascism in the post-truth, or as
Giroux terms it, the “pre-truth world” (p. 202), where opinions outdo facts.
Giroux despairs that we now live in a neo-fascist world where the very
constructs underpinning democracy: culture, education, new and traditional
media, are in the hands of despots who encourage and thrive on ignorance. His
quest is to find a new place for critical thinking in a world where the concept
has become dangerous.

459 | P a g e
Alpesh Maisuria, Brad Evans, Francisco Duran Del Fierro, Robert Jackson, Sheila Macrine & Annette Rimmer

Quoting Hedges (2019), Giroux reflects on the history of this neo-fascism in

which Trump is seen less as a leader, more as a “grotesque product of failed
democracy” (p. 196), whose tyranny was invited in by Clinton and Obama. The
book offers an impassioned analysis of Trump as a mouthpiece for extremist
groups, reminiscent of past and current dictatorships whose lying has become a
“rhetorical gimmick in which all that matters politically is denied.” (p. 19)
Though Trump is a central figure of toxic politics, Giroux refers also to the
global shift to the right, and the brutal regimes of Orbån, Erdogan, Bolsonaro
and other “jackals, drunk on greed and power who are willing to kill the planet
and any vestige of decency and social justice in order to gorge themselves on
wealth” (p.233). He contemplates with horror, the impact of this grotesque
mainstreaming of fascist politics on education and he defines education as all
encompassing – not limited to the formal domains of schools and universities.
It is in this wider cultural realm of public pedagogy that Giroux finds optimism
– in the argument for expanding critical pedagogical means into the
mechanisms that mediate our everyday lives, into new and traditional media,
digital screen culture. The discourses of community and the common good, he
argues, can be refreshed and resurrected as empowering educational practice.
Giroux brings his approach to diverse educational practices in multiple sites in
order to challenge the erosion of social justice. Such sites where the “active
destruction of particular ways of life, and their transformation into something
new” takes place. (Hall, 2019:348) For me, as a radio producer working
together with marginalised groups of all ages and intersectionalities, the
language of engaging culture in a pedagogy of hope, freedom and
transformation (Giroux, 2010; Freire, 1970; hooks, 2003) is inspirational.
As teachers in higher education, we face huge challenges in a world where
instrumental, depoliticised learning is prized above critical thinking. Giroux
asks how we might imagine an education as central to politics how might we
revive a radical imagination and check the nihilism and despair of the current

460 | P a g e
A Book Review Symposium: Henry A. Giroux (2020) On Critical Pedagogy [2nd Edition]

moment? Giroux’s view is that the answers, once again, are to be found in the
wider societal realm of collective action against capitalism. Students need to
problematise, to reframe private problems as structural, and to be energised to
engage in resistance.

He returns to Trump’s normalisation of the unspeakable but adds that he has

forced us to question capitalism, power, politics and courage. The only hope for
change will emerge from a strong counter-capitalism movement and a precursor
to this is a revolution in consciousness and values, one that makes education
central to politics and “stokes the radical imagination to…shut down the
authoritarian machine that has desended upon the globe” (p.237).

The impassioned optimism of this edition lies in his call for a new language of
militant possibility or, quoting Leffel (2018) ‘imagined futures’, even in the
midst of market fundamentalism and neo fascism; he asks educators and
cultural workers to redefine and transform new media apparatus and screen
culture into a new social movement, reclaiming the ‘promise and possibilities of
a democratic public life’ (p.96). He underscores Stuart Hall’s assertion that all
sites of media and culture can be transformed into sites of problematising
dialogue and social action. He calls for a belief in the principle of hope and
global collective resistance. Education, defined as all forms of cultural work and
extending far beyond the classroom, has a central role to play in fighting toxic
politics and shutting down authoritarianism.

His final chapter is in the form of a conversation with Brad Evans, in which
Giroux reminds us about his own educational background and his discovery of
the hidden racism and classism in the formal and informal school curriculum.
Asked what he would say to Henry aged fourteen, Giroux repeats the

461 | P a g e
Alpesh Maisuria, Brad Evans, Francisco Duran Del Fierro, Robert Jackson, Sheila Macrine & Annette Rimmer

importance of love, courage, respect, and rejecting the power of fear, to make
life “a journey filled with dreams of a more just and equitable world.” (p.252)
Giroux gives little attention to feminist pedagogy, (hooks, 2003) or indeed the
gendered nature of education and society; perhaps it is implicit for those of us
viewing the world through an intersectional lens. However, I recommend this
text, not only for educators, but for learners in all disciplines as it offers a
mechanism for self and societal reflection in addition to its clarion call to
resistance.

References
Freire, P. (1970) The Pedagogy of the Oppressed, London: Penguin
Giroux, H. (2010) Rethinking Education as the Practice of Freedom: Paulo Freire and the
promise of critical pedagogy in Policy Futures in Education Volume 8 Number 6 2010
Hall, S. (1981) in Morley, D. (Ed)(2019) Essential Essays, Stuart Hall, Durham:Duke
University Press
Hooks, b. (2003) Teaching Community: a pedagogy of hope, London:Routledge

Author Details
Dr Alpesh Maisuria is an Associate Professor of Education Policy in Critical Education at
the University of the West of England, Bristol, UK. He has published widely in the field of
education and Marxism.

Professor Brad Evans is a political philosopher, critical theorist and writer, whose work
specialises on the problem of violence. He currently holds a Chair in Political Violence &
Aesthetics at the University of Bath, UK.

Francisco Durán del Fierro is a PhD Candidate UCL Institute of Education, London, UK.
His research focuses on the different aspects of higher education from a sociological
perspective: academics' practices, quality assurance, equity of access to higher education, and
so forth. His research project is entitled: "The ethical dimension of critique in academia. The
case of Chilean universities".

462 | P a g e
 A Book Review Symposium: Henry A. Giroux (2020) On Critical Pedagogy [2nd Edition]

Dr Robert P. Jackson is co-editor of Revisiting Gramsci’s Notebooks (2020), and teaches

political theory and the history of modern political thought at Manchester Metropolitan
University, UK. He is a specialist in is critical theory with a particular emphasis on the
thought of Antonio Gramsci and Georg Lukács.

Professor Sheila Macrine is a Cognitive Psychologist in the Department of STEM

Education and Teacher Development at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, USA,
where she coordinates the Special Education Program.

Dr Annette Rimmer is a radio producer in community radio and a lecturer at The University
of Manchester, UK. Annette's research is in media & social justice, feminist pedagogy, social
policy, urban/rural sociology and generally feminist social research.

463 | P a g e

View publication stats