Giroux on Giroux
[from a conversation with Carlos Torres]
Part 2
HG: I tried to reinvigorate the debate
by challenging the notion that domination was so oppressive that
schools could only be talked about as either prisons, or total
institutions in the service of oppression. It was an unproductive
discourse and emphasized the social reproduction forces at work
in schools while ignoring any space for resistance or the complex
ways in which power worked.
. . . my long time concern with the role of teachers
as intellectuals has, certainly been, an organizing principle
for much of my work. As an important theoretical category, it
underwent a number of revisions moving from a concern with teachers
as transformative intellectuals to the more political role of
teachers as public intellectuals.
. . . I believe that my writing on popular culture
speaks to a significant contribution in my overall body of work.
The work on popular culture also made it possible for me to cross
disciplines and write and publish in other fields, outside of
education.
. . . . another significance of the work is that
it linked pedagogy to other spheres in a way that attracted a
lot of attention from other fields. In this sense, I think my
work contributed to a growing recognition of the importance of
pedagogy in other fields, including composition, literary studies,
speech communication, media studies, and so on.
. . . my work has always taken an amazingly
strong stand for developing the discourse of ethics. And not an
ethical discourse that makes a claim to some universal essence.
But one that is provisional and constantly reexamining itself
in the light of the historical conditions and contexts that we
inherit and move within. I can't imagine a critical pedagogy or
cultural politics that doesn't engage the difficult issues surrounding
the meaning and limits of ethics and its relationship to the political.
. . . If educators can't address the question
of agency and ethics then we're in big trouble, to say the least.
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