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Tag Archives: Frankfurt School

Reason After Its Eclipse: On Late Critical Theory (2016) by Dr. Martin Jay, Department of History, UC Berkeley

24 Tue Jan 2017

Posted by ztnh in Anti-Totalitarianism, Critical Theory, Philosophy

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Against the Grain, C.S. Soong, dialectic of enlightenment, Dr. Gottfried Wilhelm (von) Leibniz (1646–1716), Dr. Herbert Marcuse (1898–1979), Dr. Karl Marx (1818-1883), Dr. Martin E. Jay (b. 1944), Dr. Max Horkheimer (1895–1973), Dr. Max Weber (1864-1920), Frankfurt School, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831), Jürgen Habermas (b. 1929), KPFA, Pacifica Radio Network, theodicy, transcript, Univerity of Wisconsin Press, University of California-Berkeley

jay-reasonafteritseclipse-cLUMPENPROLETARIAT—Of all the philosophical strands touching upon political economy, which we might encounter at the university level, apart from Marxian economics and Marxian philosophy, one of the most interesting with respect to sociopolitical (or socioeconomic) emancipation is the Frankfurt School of social theory. [1]  Back at the heterodox economics department at the University of Missouri-Kansas City (UMKC) a few years ago, at least one friend always championed the Frankfurt School and other neo-Marxists. [2]  As I studied undergrad economics at UMKC, with an emphasis on Marxian economics and modern monetary theory (MMT), and sought to find their intersectionality or synthesis, my radical friend was praising the virtues of Adorno, Marcuse, Horkheimer, and other theorists associated with the Frankfurt School.  Perhaps, we agreed that Dr. Karl Marx has contributed the most accurate description of the mechanics of capital, its nature, form, and dynamics, its circuital expansion.  But the Frankfurt School has presented compelling critiques of the various Marxian schools of thought, which have succeeded Marx.  Certainly, as Marxian scholar Dr. David Harvey reminds us:

I teach Marx.  And a question I always ask is:  What can we learn from Marx?  And what do we have to do for ourselves?  And I think that that’s a very important question to ask because very frequently, in the past, people have read their Marx and then sort of, I don’t know, plunked reality into it and, then, said:  Ah! Here’s the answer!  I don’t think you can do that.  I think there’s only a limited set of things we can learn from Marx.

Paradoxically, we can’t really learn that much about socialism or communism or the future from Marx.  We can learn a great deal about how capital works.

Marx will always be important for understanding capital, what it is and how it works.  But, as Dr. Harvey reminds us, and critical theory shows us, we must constantly grapple with the reality of capitalist relations in our own time and place.  So, it was a great joy to find today that free speech radio’s Against the Grain was featuring a discussion with Professor Martin Jay (Department of History, University of California-Berkeley) about his book, Reason after its Eclipse: On Late Critical Theory.  The title evokes Max Horkheimer‘s important classic, The Eclipse of Reason (1947), a foundational text within critical theory.  Critical theory extends many of the important lines of theoretical inquiry elaborated by Dr. Marx and others since, who have sought to expand and build upon earlier work.  There is always so much for us to read.  But Professor Jay’s book On Late Critical Theory is an important read, which provides us with a philosophical study of reason and the foundations of intellectual inquiry.  And, of course, critical theory is required reading for all self-respecting intellectuals (assuming that’s not a contradiction in terms).

This is a fascinating discussion, which touches upon the ideas of Adorno and Habermas, of course, but also those of Marx, Weber, Hegel, Horkheimer, Marcuse, and others, including topics ranging from Horkheimer’s views on art and aesthetics to argumentation; Marcuse’s structural transformation of the public sphere, valuing evidence and its centrality to a responsible press; Habermas’ view of communicative rationality; and persuasion.  Listen (and/or download) here. [3]

Messina

***

[Working draft transcript of actual radio broadcast by Messina for Lumpenproletariat and Against the Grain]

AGAINST THE GRAIN—[24 JAN 2017]  [SF Bay Area Flamenco Festival announcement]  [KPFA station identification] 

[Against the Grain theme music]

“Today on Against the Grain, reasoning may be something we do.  But reason is an idea, whose content and fate have been debated and discussed over the course of two millennia.  I’m C.S. Soong.  U.C. Berkeley historian Martin Jay joins me to discuss his new book, Reason after its Eclipse: On Late Critical Theory, after these news headlines.”  (c. 1:15)

[KPFA News Headlines (read by Christina Aanestad) omitted by scribe]  (c. 5:35)

“From the studios of KPFA in Berkeley, California, this is Against the Grain on Pacifica Radio.  My name is C.S. Soong.

“Many have been tempted to think, in times of relative peace and prosperity, that the world is moving toward ever greater rationality, that Reason, with a capital ‘R’, is in the process of becoming realised.  Notions like that take a hit when times turn dark, when, for example, fascism rears its ugly head.  And, then, people wonder:  What’s happened to reason?  What’s happened to rational thinking?  And:  How did this—you might call it—crisis of reason, how did it arise?  And what can we do about it?

“A collection of thinkers associated with the Frankfurt School, which was established in Germany in the 1920s and, then, relocated to the U.S. because of Nazism, a number of Frankfurt School thinkers grappled with what they saw as a kind of crisis of reason, with different thinkers taking different approaches to the question and coming up with different ways to address it.  (c. 6:53)

“The ideas of two Frankfurt philosophers, Theodor Adorno and Jürgen Habermas, are among the many ideas investigated in a new book by Martin Jay, a book called Reason after its Eclipse: On Late Critical Theory.  In the book, Martin Jay, a history professor at UC Berkeley, described how Adorno looked to aesthetics for answers.  (c. 7:17)

“For Adorno, writes Jay, art was not the betrayer of reason, but rather its salvation.

“Jay also examines the very different approach taken by Habermas, a second-generation theorist of the Frankfurt School.  Jürgen Habermas, in his effort to restore a robust notion of reason, pointed to a rationality rooted in the give and take of communication, of giving reasons and persuading through logical arguments and listening to the arguments of others.

“When Martin Jay joined me in-studio to discuss Reason after its Eclipse, I began by asking what concept of reason he was claiming, or observing, had been eclipsed.”  (c. 8:00)

DR. MARTIN JAY:  “This an impossible question to answer.  And, in fact, I address precisely the impossibility in the introduction [to my book] to the extent that the defining of a concept, the limitational concept, the belief that you can create a single unilocal meaning of a concept is precisely what intellectual history, um, tries to avoid.  What intellectual history is most interested, I think, in doing is tracing the sometimes adventitious, sometimes meaningful—let’s call it—pilgrimage of a word or a term or a constellation of terms over a long period of time.

“So, reason—not only in English, but in all the various other languages going all the way back to the Greek logos, and Italian [ratio], and a lot in between, reason‘s had many, many different meanings over time.

“So, what the book tried to do is to be fair to the variety of meanings and not privilege one as the essential meaning.  Having said that, the Frankfurt School, itself—the people about whom I’m writing about in this book—did have an implicit normative notion of reason, which was, in their eyes, eclipsed in the modern world in favour of a debased version, which they saw as, essentially, instrumental.  (c. 9:26)

“So, even though I’m being a little reluctant to give you a definition, they, I think, implicitly, held on to a normative notion.

“Now, one of the arguments of the book is that they never fully, at least not in the first generation of critical theorists, never fully defended a viable notion of what that alternative to instrumental reason was.  They derived somewhat from Hegel, some from Kant, some from other metaphysical sources, maybe even theological sources, sometimes psychoanalytic sources, but there was never an absolutely coherent version.  (c. 9:29)

“So, the second generation of critical theorists, most notably Jürgen Habermas, had to provide a kind of paradigm shift, in which a different version of rationality became his normative standard against which instrumental reason was measured.  And, so, the book tries to tell the story, precisely, of that shift from the first to the second generation, with Habermas’ alternative—communicative rationality—being the new norm.”  (c. 10:27)

C.S. SOONG:  “And, by instrumental reason, you mean reason used as a means to some end?”

DR. MARTIN JAY:  “Uh, Max Weber was the first, really, to point this out, that there was a substantive notion of reason, one which emphasised values, one which emphasised ultimate, we might say, concerns, ethical as well as cognitive.  That, on one hand, and other types of reason, formal, and, most importantly for our purposes, instrumental, which emphasised the rationality of finding means, finding instruments to achieve ends, which are themselves arbitrarily and contingently given.  (c. 11:05)

“So, instrumental rationality was, basically, the rationality of a kind of efficiency, a kind of willingness to suspend a deeper question of why you’re doing something.  So, for example, you might have, during wartime, a situation, a goal of winning a battle, of winning a war, and you might use the most efficacious way of doing that, which would, perhaps, be to, uh, wipe out the population, civilian as well as military, against whom you were fighting.  But this doesn’t, of course, raise the difficult, ethical question of:  Who should, in fact, be seen as the enemy?  Who should not?  For what reason is the war being fought?  Is it possible to minimise collateral damage?  And all the other things, that are ethical questions.

“So, instrumental reason, essentially, brackets the ends, sees them as arbitrary and irrational, and reduces reason to merely its means-ends possibility.  (c. 12:01)

C.S. SOONG:  “Now, in the eyes of the Frankfurt School, the first generation, is there a way to generalise about what they saw instrumental reasoning coming out of, in other words, what they saw instrumental reason replacing?  What was the prior version of reason, that maybe they approved of, or maybe they felt was more benign than instrumental reason?”

DR. MARTIN JAY:  “The first generation, basically, held on to a notion of what might be called an emphatic or a metaphysical notion of reason, which was a notion prior to the reduction of philosophy to science and the triumph of modern technology, one which emphasised the role, that reason played in creating a nexus, we might say, of means and ends, in which the ends were themselves rationally chosen.

“Now, what makes it particularly difficult to figure out exactly where this notion of objective and non-instrumental reason can be located is that there was a metaphysical residue, which said that somehow it existed in history, it existed out there, it existed in social relations, rather than, uh, human interaction, understood as the process of giving reasons, or the process of reasoning.  So that, there was what might be called an inherent reason in the world, which was a residue of a sort of metaphysical idea that the world, itself, was the creation of a rational god, could—even though we may not fully understand it—could be, at the deepest level, inherently rational.  (c. 13:37)

“Now, there are two versions of this, we might say.  One is what’s called a conservative version:  The world is, with all its apparent, let’s say, surface or, let’s say, contingent irrationalities, on the deepest level, is reasonable, is rational, is somehow meaningful.  And, one might argue, this was best expressed in the work of the 17th-century philosopher Leibniz, who contended that there was a principle of sufficient reason underlying all the happenings, that occurred, even those, that seemed most basically irrational or unethical.  So, he came up with theodicy, which said that partial evils were part of a general good.  This is one version.

“The second version, we might call it, more or less Hegelian and, certainly, Marxist, was that reason exists, but not yet in a rational form, that the world is potentially rational.  The world has the tendency to become rational.  The world is, in complicated ways, moving through an historical process, which has as its goal the realisation in the institutions and practices of humankind a version of reason.  (c. 14:43)

“But, here, too, it happens, if not automatically, at least on a level, that is almost like providence, in the religious sense, that happens behind the backs and even against the wills of individuals.  And this was a version, that Marxism emphasised as an automatic process of, you know, basically, social revolution-producing outcomes, that would be beneficial to humankind.

“So, the Frankfurt School, to some extent depended on this latter version, but, basically, became disillusioned with the Marxist notion that this was inherently happening in a meta-narrative of historical progress, which left them with a dilemma because, if reason was not already in the world and reason was not, in a way, the talus of the world inevitably happening in a future, then it left it, in a way, hanging in the air.  There was no, what you might call, human agent or a social agent bringing about reason.  It had to be done by will.  It had to be done by practice.  It was not yet in place.  And there was a kind of, we might say, loss of faith in the possibility of rationality finally being achieved.

“So, to some extent, the Frankfurt School fell back on a rather desperate utopianism, in which, although the present was growing increasingly problematic—and remember they were writing, many of them, during the period of fascism—and the enlightenment, instead of being a progressive, upwardly mobile, we might say, phenomenon, was dialectically going also in a negative direction.  This is the idea of dialectic of enlightenment.

“They were left with, really, no hope beyond a kind of—we might call it—faith and prefigurative ciphers of utopian, maybe, art, maybe in other aspects of human imagination, but certainly not sufficient to create much confidence that reason would be achieved in the near or even in the far future.” (c. 16:39)

C.S. SOONG:  “So, you focus part of the book on what Max Horkheimer, a prominent, a leading member of the Frankfurt School, thought about reason and what had happened to it, what the future might bring.  What did Horkheimer contend is the disease of reason?”

DR. MARTIN JAY:  “Well, this is a very troubling question because, if you have a notion that there was once a robust positive—let’s call it—objective or emphatic notion of reason, which is then replaced by a diminished instrumental version, then, it’s a fairly simple narrative of decline.  If your replace that with the notion that, from the very beginning, from the origins of human logos, of human use of reason, to survive in a hostile world there’s always already a kind of negative fatality, in which reason is used for self-preservation.  And self-preservation involves, basically, dominating a hostile environment, which creates a kind of technological instrumentality, which becomes inherently anti-human and certainly hostile to nature in its more benign forms.  (c. 17:49)  [snip]  “

[additional notes/transcription pending]

[snip] (c. 59:59)

Learn more at AGAINST THE GRAIN.

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Reason After Its Eclipse: A Conversation With Martin Jay, posted to Vimeo

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“The Dictator Decides” (2016), posted on YouTube by Pet Shop Boys on 1 APR 2016.

“Pazzo!” (2016), posted on YouTube by Pet Shop Boys on 1 APR 2016.

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[1]  About the Frankfurt School of social theory:

The Frankfurt School (German: Frankfurter Schule) is a school of social theory and philosophy associated in part with the Institute for Social Research at the Goethe University Frankfurt. Founded during the interwar period, the School consisted of dissidents who felt at home neither in the existent capitalist, fascist, nor communist systems that had formed at the time. Many of these theorists believed that traditional theory could not adequately explain the turbulent and unexpected development of capitalist societies in the twentieth century. Critical of both capitalism and Soviet socialism, their writings pointed to the possibility of an alternative path to social development.[1]

Although sometimes only loosely affiliated, Frankfurt School theorists spoke with a common paradigm in mind; they shared the Marxist Hegelian premises and were preoccupied with similar questions.[2] To fill in the perceived omissions of classical Marxism, they sought to draw answers from other schools of thought, hence using the insights of antipositivist sociology, psychoanalysis, existential philosophy, and other disciplines.[3] The school’s main figures sought to learn from and synthesize the works of such varied thinkers as Kant, Hegel, Marx, Freud, Weber, and Lukács.[4]

Following Marx, they were concerned with the conditions that allow for social change and the establishment of rational institutions.[5] Their emphasis on the “critical” component of theory was derived significantly from their attempt to overcome the limits of positivism, materialism, and determinism by returning to Kant’s critical philosophy and its successors in German idealism, principally Hegel’s philosophy, with its emphasis on dialectic and contradiction as inherent properties of human reality.

Since the 1960s, Frankfurt School critical theory has increasingly been guided by Jürgen Habermas‘s work on communicative reason, linguistic intersubjectivity and what Habermas calls “the philosophical discourse of modernity“.[6] Critical theorists such as Raymond Geuss and Nikolas Kompridis have voiced opposition to Habermas, claiming that he has undermined the aspirations for social change that originally gave purpose to critical theory’s various projects—for example the problem of what reason should mean, the analysis and enlargement of “conditions of possibility” for social emancipation, and the critique of modern capitalism.[7]

[2]  About neo-Marxism:

Neo-Marxism is a loose term for various twentieth-century approaches that amend or extend Marxism and Marxist theory, usually by incorporating elements from other intellectual traditions, such as critical theory, psychoanalysis, or existentialism (in the case of Sartre).

Erik Olin Wright‘s theory of contradictory class locations, which incorporates Weberian sociology, critical criminology, and anarchism, is an example of the syncretism in neo-Marxist theory.[1] As with many uses of the prefix neo-, many theorists and groups designated as neo-Marxist have attempted to supplement the perceived deficiencies of orthodox Marxism or dialectical materialism. Many prominent neo-Marxists, such as Herbert Marcuse and other members of the Frankfurt School, were sociologists and psychologists.

Neo-Marxism comes under the broader framework of the New Left. In a sociological sense, neo-Marxism adds Max Weber‘s broader understanding of social inequality, such as status and power, to Marxist philosophy. Strains of neo-Marxism include: critical theory, analytical Marxism and French structural Marxism.

The concept arose as a way to explain questions which were not explained in Karl Marx’s works. There are many different “branches” of Neo-Marxism often not in agreement with each other and their theories.

[3]  Terrestrial radio transmission, 94.1 FM (KPFA, Berkeley, CA) with online simulcast and digital archiving:  Against the Grain, this one-hour broadcast hosted by C.S. Soong, Tuesday, 24 JAN 2017, 12:00 PST.

Broadcast summary at kfpa.org (accessed 24 JAN 2017):

What happens when “reason” is in decline, when the world appears to be moving in the direction of irrationality and political pathology?  Martin Jay discusses how two Frankfurt School thinkers, Theodor Adorno and Jürgen Habermas, tried to salvage a critical version of reason.  Whereas Adorno looked to art and aesthetics, Habermas appealed to practices of interpersonal communication and argumentation.

Martin Jay, Reason after Its Eclipse: On Late Critical Theory University of Wisconsin Press, 2016

A note on Reason after its Eclipse: On Late Critical Theory by University of Wisconsin Press:

George L. Mosse Series in Modern European Cultural and Intellectual History
Steven E. Aschheim, Stanley G. Payne, Mary Louise Roberts, and David J. Sorkin, Series Editors

“Martin Jay is one of the most respected intellectual historians now working, and any book by him is an important event.  His subject here could hardly be bigger: the idea of reason in Western thought over two millennia.”
—Michael Rosen, Harvard University

Martin Jay tackles a question as old as Plato and still pressing today: what is reason, and what roles does and should it have in human endeavor?  Applying the tools of intellectual history, he examines the overlapping, but not fully compatible, meanings that have accrued to the term “reason” over two millennia, homing in on moments of crisis, critique, and defense of reason.

After surveying Western ideas of reason from the ancient Greeks through Kant, Hegel, and Marx, Jay engages at length with the ways leading theorists of the Frankfurt School—Horkheimer, Marcuse, Adorno, and most extensively Habermas—sought to salvage a viable concept of reason after its apparent eclipse.  They despaired, in particular, over the decay in the modern world of reason into mere instrumental rationality.  When reason becomes a technical tool of calculation separated from the values and norms central to daily life, then choices become grounded not in careful thought but in emotion and will—a mode of thinking embraced by fascist movements in the twentieth century.

Is there a more robust idea of reason that can be defended as at once a philosophical concept, a ground of critique, and a norm for human emancipation?  Jay explores at length the communicative rationality advocated by Habermas and considers the range of arguments, both pro and con, that have greeted his work.

A brief bio of Dr. Martin Jay by University of Wisconsin Press:

Author. Photo credit, NameMartin Jay is the Sidney Hellman Ehrman Professor of History at the University of California, Berkeley.  He is the author of fourteen previous books, including The Dialectical Imagination: A History of the Frankfurt School and the Institute of Social Research, 1923–50, which has been translated into thirteen languages; Marxism and Totality: The Adventures of a Concept from Lukács to Habermas; Adorno; Permanent Exiles: Essays on the Intellectual Migration from Germany to America; Downcast Eyes: The Denigration of Vision in Twentieth- Century French Thought; Songs of Experience: Modern European and American Variations on a Universal Theme; and The Virtues of Mendacity: On Lying in Politics.

***

[25 JAN 2017]

[Last modified at 15:24 PST on 26 JAN 2017]

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Rethinking Marxism: An Ethics for Marxism: Spinoza On Fortitude by Dr. Ted Stolze

26 Mon Sep 2016

Posted by ztnh in Anti-Capitalism, collective bargaining, Critical Theory, Marxian Theory (Marxism), Philosophy, Political Economy, Political Science, Presidential Election 2016

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affect, Against the Grain, Althusserian Marxism, Antonio "Toni" Negri (b. 1933), Antonio Gramsci (1891-1937), Baruch Spinoza (1632-1677), Becoming Marxist: Studies In Philosophy Struggle and Endurance, Cerritos College (Norwalk CA), De Witt Family (13th-17th centuries), Donald Trump, Dr. Karl Marx (1818-1883), Dr. Stephanie Kelton, Dr. Ted Stolze, Epictetus (55-135), Frankfurt School, grit, Hal Draper (1914-1990), Hillary Rodham Clinton, House of Orange monarchy, KPFA, Marcus Aurelius (121-180), Marxian economics, MMT, Modern Monetary Theory, Modern Money Theory, Norman Geras (1943-2013), Pacifica Radio Network, Rethinking Marxism, Rosa Luxemburg (1871-1919), Senator Bernie Sanders, Stoicism, transcript

413px-spinoza

Baruch Spinoza (1632-1677)

LUMPENPROLETARIAT—On today’s edition of Against the Grain, Professor Ted Stolze (Cerritos College) discussed a new article he’s published at Rethinking Marxism, which ranges from the philosophical works of Baruch Spinoza to Dr. Karl Marx.  The article is entitled “An Ethics for Marxism: Spinoza On Fortitude“.  Listen (and/or download) here. [1]

Messina

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[Working draft transcript of actual radio broadcast by Messina for Lumpenproletariat and Against the Grain.]

337px-Karl_Marx_001WikiUser

Dr. Karl Marx (1818-1883)

AGAINST THE GRAIN—[26 SEP 2016]  [Station identification by Erica Bridgeman(sp?):  94.1 KPFA and 89.3 KPFB, in Berkeley; 88.1 KFCF, in Fresno; 97.5 K248BR, in Santa Cruz; and online at kpfa.org.  The time is twelve, noon.  Stay tuned, next, for Against the Grain.]  [theme music]

“Today, on Against the Grain, what sustains radical politics?  What keeps resistance to oppression going over the long run?

“Ted Stolze finds, in the writings of Baruch Spinoza, resources, that can help socialists and other radicals persevere and carry on with their political struggles.  I’m C.S. Soong, the philosophy professor and specialist in Spinoza and Marx joins us, after these News Headlines with Aileen Alfandary.”  (c. 1:04)

[KPFA News Headlines (read by Aileen Alfandary) omitted by scribe]  [2] (c. 6:55)

C.S. SOONG:  “From the studios of KPFA in Berkeley, California, this is Against the Grain on Pacifica Radio.  My name is C.S. Soong.

“People rise up in anger.  They cry out and gather on the streets and organise in their communities in response to some injustice, something, that provokes indignation and outrage.  And, sometimes, this upsurge in protest can go on for some time, for weeks and even months.  And, then, often, the demos begin to fizzle out.  And the anger subsides.  And a lot of people go back to their everyday lives.

“So, if a key question hovering over radical politics and activism is how to sustain resistance, how to motivate or inspire people to stick with it, then what, or who, can we turn to for resources, for ideas about how to keep radicals going over the long run?

“Baruch Spinoza was a 17th century Dutch philosopher, who wrote a lot about the human condition.  And my guest, today, has found, in Spinoza’s writings, ideas, that he believes can help radicals persevere as radicals.

“Ted Stolze is a philosophy professor at Cerritos College in Norwalk, California.  And he contributed an article entitled ‘An Ethics for Marxism: Spinoza On Fortitude’ to the journal Rethinking Marxism.  He’s also author of the forthcoming book, Becoming Marxist: Studies In Philosophy, Struggle, and Endurance.

“Now, Spinoza was born in Amsterdam in 1632.  His Portugese-Jewish parents had moved there to escape persecution.  I asked Ted Stolze what he likes to emphasise about Spinoza’s early life.”  (c. 8:37)

DR. TED STOLZE:  “He was the son of a fruit merchant.  So, he grew up in a, sort of a, business climate.  And, in one of his earliest works, called A Treatise On the Improvement of the Understanding—is the customary title—Spinoza reflects that he had sought out various forms of truth and goodness and came to the realisation—this isn’t, necessarily, an autobiographical statement on his part; but this is a universal experience, that I think reflects, in part, his autobiography.  He’d realised that wealth and honour and pleasure were fleeting, were inadequate. [3]

“And the limited biographical materials, that have survived—and later biographers have drawn on these—suggest that he was a very sensitive young man.  He was not comfortable or satisfied with remaining within the context of his father’s business. [4]  His brother did pursue that.  But, Spinoza, himself, saw the limitations, the constraints of, even, a successful business.

“And he was widely regarded as a very precocious student.  His Latin teacher, Franciscus van den Enden, was a big influence on him.  He became very interested in theatre and the arts and may, even, have acted in some plays, that van den Enden produced.

“So, he just seems to have been a very precocious young man, who saw the limitations of the life, that was laid out for him.  And he had a kind of—I guess we could call it—an existential crisis or a philosophical conversion.  I’m not sure, exactly, what would be the best way of characterising it.

Baruch Spinoza was eventually banned by his Sephardic Jewish community for being an independent-thinking radical in 17th century Amsterdam.

C.S. SOONG:  “At age 17, Spinoza cut short his formal studies to help the family’s business.  At age 24, he was excommunicated from the Sephardic community of Amsterdam.  Tell us about that.”  (c. 10:49)

DR. TED STOLZE:  “Well, excommunicated is more of a Christian way of explaining.  He fell under a ban by the elders of the Jewish synagogue, or community, in Amsterdam.  And they were in a somewhat precarious situation.  If I were thinking along their lines:  Here’s a young, radical, free-thinker, who is endangering the stability and respect and toleration, that was offered to the Jewish community in Amsterdam. 

“Throughout Europe, there were very few places, in which Jews could worship openly and not fear persecution, social isolation.  So, I think there was a level of discomfort with Spinoza.  And it was a mutual parting of the ways, frankly.  I think Spinoza was, at that point, not really content to remain within the small circle of friends and family within the Jewish community.  He had already met people through his father’s business.  He had met other individuals, just, in everyday intellectual pursuits and his studies.

“So, in a way, it sounds harsh to say it was an excommunication or a ban.  I would think we could call it a mutual parting of the ways.”  (c. 12:08)

C.S. SOONG:  “Now, we are talking, this hour, about an article you wrote for the journal Rethinking Marxism.  It’s called ‘An Ethics for Marxism: Spinoza On Fortitude‘.  And what you’re trying to do is draw on resources, that you find within Spinoza, within his thought and writing, resources, that might aid what?, that might help whom?  And I assume, of course, and I know, that this relates to the socialist project, the project of people, who have read, and understood, and taken from Karl Marx.”

DR. TED STOLZE:  “Yes.  Well, I’ve been an activist most of my adult life.  Most recently, as a union president, as a faculty union president.  Previously, in the anti-apartheid movement, Central America solidarity, anti-Gulf War movement.

“And, over the years, it occurred to me—it’s very difficult—and I think this is true of other activists as well—it’s pretty difficult to sustain a commitment to radical social change, partly because of the ups and downs of movements, partly because of the stresses, that activism plays upon each individual, emotionally, and their friendships and family relationships.

“Now, Spinoza wouldn’t be the only person one could turn to.  But, I think, Spinoza’s discussion of emotions, the affects, to use his technical term, is, potentially, fruitful for radical activists to think through.  On the one hand, what causes people to become motivated to participate within radical political projects, but also what can sustain their commitments, especially in the context of the ups and downs of struggles and that many of the movements, that we participate within, will not fully achieve what we hope that they will achieve [within our lifetimes].

“So, it’s that unevenness, I think, of the rise and fall of social movements and how activists and organisers can regularly rethink and adjust themselves to that ebb and flow of movements.  A very specific, recent, example, I think, is, like many people, I was supportive of the Bernie Sanders campaign.  And even that slogan, to feel the Bern, was very contingent on the success of the campaign and forces, that we don’t always have much control over. [7]

“So, how do you sustain a commitment, even past the defeat of Bernie Sanders, or whatever comes after Bernie Sanders?”  (c. 15:07)

Well, I clearly see emotional appeals by musicians, by artists.  For many of my generation, music played a very important role, whether it was the Rolling Stones or Bob Dylan or Marvin Gaye.

I mean the ability of music to animate a desire for a society to be very different; that’s what I would call a utopian element within the arts or a romantic impulse within much music and art.

C.S. SOONG:  “Socialists should, in an effort to persuade others to join in the socialist project—right?  I mean part of what socialists want to do is to build the movement.  They should, and they do, use facts and arguments; and, they, also, you write, should rely on emotion, by which you mean what?”

DR. TED STOLZE:  “Well, I clearly see emotional appeals by musicians, by artists.  For many of my generation, music played a very important role, whether it was the Rolling Stones or Bob Dylan or Marvin Gaye.  I mean the ability of music to animate a desire for a society to be very different; that’s what I would call a utopian element within the arts or a romantic impulse within much music and art.

“Of course, there’s also music or art, that plays upon anger, indignation, rage, a sense of injustice, that things should not be like this, cannot be allowed to remain like this.

“Also, I think of, in public meetings and in public events, there’s a tendency for, maybe anger and indignation is the common emotional appeal.  The danger, of course, and this is why, I think, partly, Spinoza is important.  If you rely on, simply, anger or indignation to arouse a crowd, it can’t easily be sustained.  I mean, in the short-run, it might be very effective.  But my concern is: How do you sustain that kind of emotional appeal.  It’s extremely short-lived or episodic.  That would also be true of utopian and romantic appeals, that people can only live in that euphoric moment of, say, the Occupy Movement for a certain period of time.  You know; weeks, months, perhaps.  But that euphoria will tend to die down.  And there is a return to the ordinary life, that we live.

“So, it’s this fluctuation of emotions, that is the problem, that I’ve observed and Spinoza in his Ethics, in his great work, especially, focuses on this kind of alternation of emotions, the dynamic of the affects between, for example, hope and fear, love and hatred.  And, if all we are presented with is this fluctuation, we’re not really able to build the kind of movement, that is going to reach out and sustain itself through these ups and downs of whatever difficulties present themselves to us.”  (c. 18:08)

[SNIP]

[(c. 23:57) Dr. Stolze draws upon an example from his experience with collective bargaining.] (c. 25:26)

C.S. SOONG:  “I’m C.S.  And this is Against the Grain on Pacifica Radio.  Ted Stolze joins us.  His academic research focuses primarily on Baruch Spinoza, the 17th century Dutch philosopher and Karl Marx and contemporary French and Italian philosophy.  And he worked for five years as president of his American Federation of Teachers Local.  And we are talking about something he wrote about Spinoza and Spinoza’s notion on fortitude and socialist politics, that appeared in the journal Rethinking Marxism.

“What about outrage toward a political system or a political injustice?  And, you know, that outrage might not last very long, for a variety of reasons, you know, for practical reasons.  We may just need to get back to work and deal with our jobs and our families and our personal lives.

“But what might the concept of fortitude and the subcategories of courage and generosity, that you laid out, that Spinoza advocated?  What might fortitude do to help us work through that outrage and anger toward something more stable, less fluctuating, and more focused, and more enduring?”  (c. 26:46)

DR. TED STOLZE:  “Right.  I think one of the difficulties here is to distinguish what Spinoza might be talking about and its relevance to radical politics.  And I guess what has become rather popular is some notion of grit.  I’ve seen a number of books, that have come out with this idea of grit.  If only we could exert greater willpower or strength of character, that we will be successful in our personal lives or in business or something along those lines. [5]

“Spinoza is not suggesting that, as actuated individuals, we are going to be able to strengthen our emotional life.  I don’t take what Spinoza is talking about as some kind of pop psychology for activists.  You know; some sort of daily routine or regimen one goes through, not that anything would be, necessarily wrong with that.  In this aspect, Spinoza could be seen as in continuity with a kind of Stoic tradition of regular reflection on one’s emotional life.  You find this in Marcus Aurelius and Epictetus and Seneca in the ancient world.  (c. 27:54)

“But I think for Spinoza, really, what’s needed is to build organisations, is to reach out to others, that the strengthening of one’s emotional life can’t fully be done by oneself, even through a very regular, regimented, routine of reflection.

“For example, we have to build sustainable movements, political parties, unions.  And, if we think about fortitude in terms of the courage aspect, that’s only one element.  The generosity aspect means that we take courage and strengthen our resolve in relation to others.  So, there’s that dynamic interplay, that dialectic, we could call it, of courage and generosity.  Those who are generous have courage strengthened, and vice versa.

“However, even within, very robust, dynamic organisations, there are periods of crisis.  There are divisions.  There are splits.  So, even at that level there are no guarantees.  But what I am trying to suggest is, for Spinoza, it’s not a merely psychological analysis of how we can rein in bad impulses or redirect bad impulses to good impulses.  It’s a question of joining forces with others.  And, for Spinoza, we increase our power to act in the world to the extent that we identify with, find support and encouragement in organisations with others.”  (c. 29:36)

C.S. SOONG:  “Another thing you bring up in this article in Rethinking Marxism is Spinoza’s insistence on looking for what’s good in whatever we come across.  Can you elaborate on that?”

DR. TED STOLZE:  “Yeah.  Let me give a contemporary example.  If you look at the presidential campaign, I think a lot of the liberals and progressives, that I know, have been unduly terrified by the specter of Donald Trump and those who support him.  There is cause to be afraid.  There is cause to be concerned.  And, yet, the ascendancy of Trump suggests, as with the support, that people had for Bernie Sanders, that things are not going to continue on as they have in the past.  There’s something new, that has emerged.  And it’s not that I would say there’s something good in Trump.  But the Trump phenomenon indicates the discontent, the lack of satisfaction with the way U.S. capitalism is going.  And it’s an opportunity. [6]

“So, the tragedy to me is that I think Bernie Sanders would have been able to, and was able to, reach the people, who were responding to Trump, or at least some of them. [7]  And, given the nature of the campaign, Hillary Clinton’s campaign is simply not, it would appear, interested in trying to reach those people, but rather simply relying on fear of consigning those who support Trump—simply to exclude them from consideration. [8]

“Now, I have family members, who are sympathetic to Trump.  So, it is challenging at a personal level to try to find some good out of what can be very, very frustrating [chuckles] conversations.  But this is the nature of politics and political debate and discussion to try to find some good in one’s opponent, not that you’re going over to the side of your opponent.  But you’re trying to strengthen your own arguments in the process.

“So, I think what Spinoza is saying is a realisation that there is, neither, pure good, nor bad, in the world.  There are relative degrees of good and bad.  And, even in a very negative situation, a situation of fear, there are bases of hope, even in a very negative campaign, like the Trump campaign, there are symptoms or indications that there’s something more interesting going on that radicals, leftists, can seek to identify and to redirect, within limits, to their own efforts at a more progressive, egalitarian, social transformation.”  (c. 32:32)

C.S. SOONG:  “I wanna step back here and talk about Spinoza and his ethics and his ethical project and what it brings to the Marxists, specifically Marxist projects.  And you bring this up in your article.  Maybe, as a way of getting into this, we could talk about to what degree you think ethics was a part of Marx.  To what degree Marx focused on ethics, as opposed to politics and capitalism and economics?  What’s your take on that?”

DR. TED STOLZE:  “Well, I’ve been in—let me take it in two different directions.  I’ve been in socialist organisations.  And my first real exposure to an education in socialist ideas was not in an academic setting, but in a socialist organisation, Solidarity, which is a small, national organisation.  But it still exists.  I remain sympathetic to that perspective of socialism from below, which is a term, that Hal Draper, who was very closely connected to the Berkeley Free Speech movement, as a librarian at UC Berkeley.  That’s his term, socialism from below or, in Marxist politics, the idea that socialism requires the self-emancipation of the working class.

“The difficulty, however, among Marxists within many of the organisations, that I’m familiar with and, to a certain extent, within my own experience, that ethics hasn’t played the sort of role, that it really ought to play.  I don’t mean that ethics should play the primary role.  But so much of the discussion within socialist groups tends to be dealing with a current political issue or a discussion of economics or foreign policy or something along these lines.  And there’s not enough attention paid to: So, why is that wrong?  And how ought we to react at a level other than just a factual analysis?

“So, part of my concern is that socialist organisations have not paid enough attention to matters of ethics.  But in Marx you do see—in Marx’s early writings, in Marx’s political writings, in Capital, itself, you see—a willingness, not just to describe capitalism and the nature of capitalist crises, but to condemn capitalism, to not provide a blueprint of what the alternative might be, what socialism might look like.  I don’t think Marx was interested in blueprints.  But he was a theorist and consistent critic of the injustices of capitalism, the degradation, the lack of dignity, that working people experience under capitalist social relations.

“So, I think there’s sort of a disconnect between the socialist organisations, that I’ve been involved in, where there isn’t much attention paid to ethics.  And, yet, Marx’s writings seem to be filled with moral condemnation of the injustices of capitalism.  That doesn’t mean that that’s all there is in Marx.  But I am suggesting that that is a resource in Marx’s writings, that contemporary socialists might want to pay attention to.

“Probably, the best example of somebody who tried to do that was an English philosopher named Norman Geras, who wrote eloquently on the need for Marxists to re-engage with ethical reflection, both, and with criticising the injustices of capitalism, but also in trying to identify what would be just means to surpass or supersede or replace capitalism.

“So, there’s a moral deficit, I think, within many organisations of the left, and the socialist organisations, that I’ve been a part of.  For all of their good work and intelligent activism, there needs to be that kind of rethinking of those moral resources, that we find within Marx’s writings, and not just Marx.  You find it with Rosa Luxemburg.  You find it in Antonio Gramsci.  You find it in the Frankfurt School.  You find it as part of the Marxist tradition.  Herbert Marcuse would be another example of a Marxist philosopher, who was deeply concerned with a moral condemnation of capitalism, not simply a characterisation of how capitalism works with capitalist crises, but why capitalism must be challenged and, to the extent that we can, reformed and, we hope, replaced with a much better kind of society or a socialist democracy, if we want to use that term.”  (c. 37:44)

C.S. SOONG:  ” [SNIP] ”

[(c. 38:12) music break: song about courage and going “against the grain”]  (c. 39:30)

C.S. SOONG:  And this is Against the Grain on Pacifica Radio.  My name is C.S. Soong.

“Ted Stolze is a philosophy professor at Cerritos College.  And he taught philosophy and religious studies for a dozen years now at, what is now, California State University-East Bay.  And we are talking about an article.  And, actually, it’s, really, a much broader research and academic investigational project he has into the work of Baruch Spinoza, who was born in 1632 and died in 1677.  He was a Dutch philosopher born of Portuguese–Jewish parents, who had fled to Amsterdam to escape persecution.

“His magnum opus is The Ethics, which was published in 1677.  He died in The Hague that year.  How political was Baruch Spinoza?  I mean we’ve been talking about his analysis of emotions, his understanding of things like fortitude and courage and generosity, and the distinction he made between passive and active affects, or emotions.

“To what degree was he politically engaged?  And, to what extent did he use the kinds of ethical resources, he was offering to the world, specifically, in political struggle or political activity?”  (c. 41:01)

DR. TED STOLZE:  “Well, we wouldn’t want to characterise Spinoza as an activist.  He did have a circle of friends, that he met regularly with and discussed philosophy and science, undoubtedly, discussed current affairs.

“When the Dutch Republic was in danger, he certainly supported the leaders of the Republic, the De Witt brothers.  But he was not somebody, who you would say was engaged in a modern political sense.  That was not really something, that he, perhaps, had any expertise or was not even something, which was possible for him.  It is interesting, that, however, that his Latin teacher, Franciscus van den Enden, was a very committed advocate of radical democratic politics and was, in France, accused of being a spy and, in fact, executed on a charge he was participating in a plot to assassinate the King of France.  (c. 42:10)

“So, I’m under the assumption that Spinoza’s relationship to his Latin teacher would’ve been one in which he was exposed to very democratic ideas.  And, in the 17th century, these were ideas, that were largely suppressed in Europe, with the exception in the mid-17th century of the English Civil War, in which King Charles the First and his army were defeated by a parliamentary army led by Oliver Cromwell, who in 1649 presided over the execution of King Charles and establishment of a Commonwealth, that last for the length of Cromwell’s life.

“But it turned into the kind of democratic republic, that I suspect, that Spinoza had hoped to see, and other, more radical elements within the parliamentary army and within English society had hoped to see.  (c. 43:12)

“So, there was a kind of disillusionment, that some have thought occurred, or a waning of Spinoza’s enthusiasm for democratic politics.  I’m not sure that that, in fact, is the case.  But there is a kind of withdrawal of Spinoza, from direct political engagement. [9]  And I think there’s, sometimes, a need for withdrawal to rethink.  And The Ethics and the unfinished last work, that Spinoza wrote called A Political Treatise do have strong commitments, I would say, still, to thinking of democracy as one in which participation, rather than representation is the identifying feature.

“There was no freedom of speech in the 17th century.  So, it would have been very difficult for Spinoza to have openly advocated democracy.  The Dutch Republic was governed by a looking elite.  And, when it was overthrown in the early 1670s, Spinoza was appalled by it and publicly sought to protest it.  But his landlady, evidently, persuaded him to stay at home and not risk the anger of the mobs, who were celebrating the overthrow of the Republic and the re-establishment of the House of Orange monarchy.

“So, I don’t think you’re gonna find in Spinoza a necessarily good model of an activist, the way we would understand an activist.  But Spinoza’s philosophy, I think, and his commitment to democracy in this participatory sense is very useful for contemporary activists.”  (c. 45:09)

C.S. SOONG:  “We’ve already talked about the pitfalls of acting out of outrage or anger or maybe the problems with anger and outrage as resources with which to fuel a continuing sort of activism or agitation.  What about pity?  What did Spinoza think of acting out of pity for others?”

DR. TED STOLZE:  ”  [Spinoza was not sympathetic to pity as it implied a sense of superioty, such as offering a homeless person a handout but not doing anything to identify nor challenge the causes and sources of that poverty.  Spinoza had a deeper sense of pity, borne of a deeper egalitarian impulse to recognise the source of the suffering and to do something about it.] [SNIP] ”

C.S. SOONG:  [SNIP]  ”  (c. 47:55)

DR. TED STOLZE:  ” [SNIP]  [TW:  On Negri, values, intergenerational struggle, etc.]  (c. 50:57)

“So, I think what Spinoza offers, his philosophy has offered, to me at least, the way of thinking, not just how we become radicalised, initially, either, through hope or anger or some combination of the two, but how we can, over the course of our lives, continue to build, continue to hope, continue to think, continue to reach out and join forces with others in new organisations, new parties, new struggles to come.  We, again, may not live to see the fruits of our efforts.  But we continue in that direction, nonetheless.”  (c. 51:38)

C.S. SOONG:  ”  [SNIP]  ”

[SNIP]

[SNIP] (c. 59:59)

Learn more at AGAINST THE GRAIN.

[This transcript will be expanded as time constraints, and/or demand or resources, allow.]

***

[1]  Terrestrial radio broadcast, 94.1 FM (KPFA, Berkeley, CA) with online simulcast and digital archiving:  Against the Grain, this one-hour broadcast hosted by co-host C.S. Soong, Monday, 26 SEP 2016, 12:00 PDT.

Programme summary from KPFA.org archive page:

“Radical political projects suffer when people burn out, get distracted, or otherwise drift away. What can help socialists and other leftists stay on course and even deepen their commitment over the long term? Ted Stolze finds in the writings of the philosopher Baruch Spinoza conceptual resources that he thinks can help radicals persevere.

Rethinking Marxism”

[2]  Topics included:  the 2016 two-party presidential debate #1, mass shooting by Dessai(sp?); jury selection in trial of Dylan Routh(sp?) for hate crimes; man pies mayor, mayor punches man in the face, requiring stitches; etc.

[3]  We may recall the fable of Siddartha Gautama.

[4]  On existential angst and feeling unsatisfied with the status quo:

“Unsatisfied” by The Replacements

[5] Indeed, in the great American tradition of stoicism, the legendary John Wayne may come to mind, in the classic film, True Grit (1969), recently remade starring Jeff Bridges (2010).  Adapted from the 1968 novel.  Or simply consider the concept of grit, as a personality trait, in the American culture.

[6]  In recent years, Ralph Nader has spoken and written about a burgeoning potential for a left-right, working class, coalition, emphasising that rank-and-file conservatives and liberals are largely working class people with more in common than they think.  See Unstoppable: The Emerging Left-Right Alliance to Dismantle the Corporate State (2014).

[7]  Actually, the biggest tragedy is that Senator Bernie Sanders quit on his supporters by acquiescing to the two-party machine, or the two-party dictatorship.

Firstly, there was evidence that Hillary Clinton’s primary campaign was illegally aided by the DNC, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, and the Democratic Party, which favored Hillary Clinton and worked behind the scenes to discredit and defeat Bernie Sanders.  Yet, Sanders did not demand that Clinton’s campaign be disqualified.  He didn’t even call for any further investigation.  Sanders simply did not fight back.  He simply said that he was “not surprised”, but he was “disappointed”.  Then, when Obama sat him down in the White House, he came back almost reprogrammed.  He was no longer campaigning to win, but to influence Hillary’s campaign.  On day one of the 2016 Democratic Primary, despite droves of his supporters still backing him, he immediately conceded to Hillary Clinton claiming that he did not have a mathematical chance of winning.  His supporters booed and cried out in anguish.  Yet, there had already been indications of electoral fraud, which has been further substantiated by this point.  (See Greg Palast’s various election reports, including for Rolling Stone and KPFA/Pacifica Radio’s Flashpoints.  Also see Greg Palast’s new documentary film The Best Democracy That Money Can Buy.)  Bernie Sanders could have fought back against the illegitimacy of Hillary Clinton’s campaign.  But he chose not to.

Secondly, Bernie Sanders’ campaign could have unanimously defeated Hillary Clinton’s campaign had Bernie Sanders featured his own chief economist Dr. Stephanie Kelton (University of Missouri-Kansas City), a heterodox economist of the Post-Keynesian variety, who is also currently one of Politico‘s Top 50 most influential people (#44 to Bernie’s #1 position).  Instead, Sanders basically squandered Dr. Kelton’s expertise and her technically sound, yet revolutionary, economic policy proposals, which Bernie supporters would have loved.  Had Bernie Sanders led with Dr. Kelton, someone with the passion, intellect, and charisma comparable to an Elizabeth Warren, the Sanders campaign could have included in its political platform the heterodox economics policy proposal of the job guarantee program, which can end involuntary unemployment, as we know it.  Dr. Kelton could have explained to the American people, via Bernie’s campaign, how modern money theory (or MMT, modern monetary theory), monetary sovereignty, having a sovereign currency, and how our current economic system works, which means the government can afford to spend for public purpose without fiscal constraints.  With all the talk about the need for jobs from all sides, including Trump and Hillary, it’s truly tragic that Bernie Sanders chose not to allow Dr. Kelton (and other heterodox economists) to explain how a job guarantee is possible, feasible, and necessary for the economic well-being of the nation.

Senator Bernie Sanders could have challenged the cheating and collusion on the part of the Hillary Clinton campaign during the Democratic Primary election.  He could’ve denounced the Democratic Party for being anti-democratic against him and his campaign.  He could’ve denounced the collusion between the Democratic and Republican parties to block other political parties from their nationally broadcast presidential debates.  He could’ve ran as an independent.  He could’ve joined forces with the Green Party.  He could’ve stood courageously, instead of caving in, allowing himself to be reprogrammed, and immediately backing neoliberal Hillary Clinton without qualification.  Instead Bernie Sanders sold out in the worst way.

[8]  Actually, it’s more than just “given the nature of the campaign”.  Actually, more precisely, it’s given the nature of the two-party system, the two-party dictatorship.  The limitations Dr. Stolze refers to extend beyond this particular election to the entire American political superstructure, which is anti-democratic in its suppression of political alternatives to the Democratic and Republican parties.

[9]  If Spinoza really lost his revolutionary or democratic spirit toward the end of his life, if his writing and later philosophy reflect a certain resignation from civic engagement, could Spinoza be the prototype for the sell-out, bourgeois, or petty bourgeois mentality among politically stagnant or moribund liberals in the United States?  Does Robert Putnam need to rewrite Bowling Alone with a reconsideration of Spinoza?

***

[Image of Baruch Spinoza by unknown.]

[26 SEP 2016]

[Last modified  12:23 PDT  3 OCT 2016]

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Dr. Henry Giroux Discusses Critical Pedagogy on Project Censored

30 Fri Oct 2015

Posted by ztnh in Critical Theory, Education

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

critical consciousness, Critical Pedagogy, Frankfurt School, KPFA, Louis Althusser, Max Horkheimer, Pacifica Radio, Professor Henry Giroux, Project Censored, Theodor W. Adorno, third party politics

ProjectCensoredLUMPENPROLETARIAT—Dr. Henry Giroux offers us a refreshing radical perspective on education through his prolific work in the field of critical pedagogy.  Listen (or download) here.

Messina

***

PROJECT CENSORED—[30 OCT 2015, TRANSCRIPT]  “Welcome to the Project Censored show on Pacifica Radio.  I’m Mickey Huff in-studio with Peter Phillips.  On today’s programme, we focus on critical pedagogy and the role of radical education in reclaiming democracy against the shadows of fascism.  We’re joined for the hour by Professor Henry Giroux, who has written prolifically about these matters over the last several decades.  Today on the programme, critical pedagogy and Henry Giroux.  Please stay with us.  [1]

“Welcome back to the Project Censored show on Pacifica Radio.  I’m Mickey Huff, with Peter Phillips.  Today on the programme, we’re joined by Dr. Henry A. Giroux.  He currently holds the McMaster University Chair for Scholarship and Public Interest in the English and Cultural Studies Department and the Paulo Freire Chair in Critical Pedagogy at the McMaster Institute for Innovation and Excellence in Teaching and Learning.  He’s a Distinguished Visiting Professor at Ryerson University.  And his recent books include The Violence of Organized Forgetting:  Thinking Beyond America’s Disimagination Machine, Zombie Politics in the Age of Casino Capitalism, Disposable Futures: The Seduction of Violence in the Age of Spectacle, and Dangerous Thinking in the Age of New Authoritarianism.  Henry Giroux is also a member of the board of directors at Truth Out.  And his website is HenryAGiroux.com.  Henry Giroux, welcome.”

DR. HENRY GIROUX:  “Thank you for having me on, Mickey.”

DR. PETER PHILLIPS:  “Henry, hi.  This is Peter Phillips.  Let’s give listeners a little background on critical theory, and the origins of that, and what you mean by critical pedagogy.”

DR. HENRY GIROUX:  “One of the things, that I wanted to do in the late ’70s, when many of us were concerned about the question of education in the United States, particularly with the rise of Ronald Reagan and, you know, the Reagan-Thatcher sort of marriage.  One of the things, that was happening was that on the Left there was an enormous attempt to view schools simply as prisons and sort of black boxes in which power was sort of equated with domination and nothing else.  And, on the other side, of course, there were people who were simply arguing that schools should simply train people for the workforce.

“I wanted to look at different traditions, that offered a language of critique and a language of possibility for being able to do that.  I was one of the people, of course, who went right to the Frankfurt School and looked at Adorno and Horkheimer and a whole range of people.  It seemed to me they offered a very valuable vocabulary for talking about schools, particularly as institutions that were involved in the production of particular kinds of subjects and desires and the role of culture and subjectivity and what that means and how to link that to larger questions in which the school became part of a much broader relationship of, both, domination and possibility.

“And, so, in theory and resistance, there was an attempt to bring that tradition into the American fold, so that became part of the dialogue of critical education theory.  And I think it was, actually, largely successful for many people.”  (c. 4:13)

DR. PETER PHILLIPS:  “Henry, what do you mean by ideological control and domination by culture and by institutions for human beings in society?”

DR. HENRY GIROUX:  “I think that what many of us became aware of, particularly after reading people like Gramsci and people like Althusser, was that schools were not just simply about instruction.  I mean schools were, in a sense, ideological state apparatuses.  They were institutions that promoted, legitimated, particular forms of knowledge, that they sanctioned, particular kinds of social relationships, highly competitive, generally, knowledge that basically mirrored the status quo.  They sanctioned and legitimated particular values and had a certain understanding of what the future should look like.  And I think that, in that sense, it became very clear that you had to talk about schools in ways, that could not be separated from questions of power and particular kinds of visions, that people had about what schools do and what they should produce.  We were trying to unravel that and, sort of, try to understand what the hidden curriculum was in many of these schools.  You know?  What were they trying to teach?  How did they correlate with larger assumptions about the dominant society?  In what ways were they stifling the imagination and critical thinking?  In what ways were they not becoming democratic public spheres, but, actually, simply work stations to segue people into the workforce?

“So, I think that, particularly, people who are concerned with critical pedagogy, people like Paolo Freire, myself, a number of others were trying to figure out how we could talk about pedagogy in a way that was, both, inspiring and energizing.” (c. 5:47)  [2]

Learn more at PROJECT CENSORED.

***

PROJECT CENSORED—Peter and Mickey spend the hour speaking with author/educator Henry Giroux. Giroux explains the concept of ‘critical pedagogy,’ and the pivotal role that education plays for the whole of society. He warns of the increasing domination of the world by the ultra-rich, and a new form of anti-intellectualism fostered by a failing corporate media. Among the measures the left must take to resist these forces, he names the formation of a third political party, and more academics taking on the duties of public intellectuals, rather than limiting their activities to the campus.

Learn more at PROJECT CENSORED.

***

[1]  KPFA News Headlines omitted from transcription.

[2]  Partial transcript by Messina.  The remainder of the interview will be transcribed as time constraints allow.

***

[10 NOV 2015  07:27 PDT]

[Last modified 10 NOV 2015  07:31 PDT]

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