An analysis of the reality of authoritarianism in pedagogy: A critique based on the work of Deleuze, Guattari and Bhaskar
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.14516/ete.185Palabras clave:
pedagogy, critique of capitalism, subjectivity, schizophrenia, time, educational change/reform and norms, critical realismResumen
When analysing authoritarianism in pedagogy, one is immediately faced with a question: How real is the authoritarianism that one is describing? There is an inevitable «loop» or mode of reciprocation between the object of investigation; i.e. authoritarianism, and one’s own subjective projections about what authoritarianism is, how one has felt it in the past, and connected it to education. Certainly, societies in the West have, in general, changed in their attitudes to pedagogic authoritarianism since the 1960s and 1970s, perhaps under the influence of the mores of post-War, mass education. This article takes two paths of explication to these changes, one through the combined work of Deleuze and Guattari, the other through the critical realism of Roy Bhaskar. The theoretical and intellectual work of Deleuze and Guattari points to and makes plain the ways in which authoritarianism in education is continually under threat and being undermined by a myriad of «minor» forces, for example, exemplified by the relations between the authoritarian teacher and his/her students. In contrast, the critical realism of Roy Bhaskar enacts a critical and realist investigation into authoritarianism in pedagogy, as the name of his approach implies. The point of this analysis is not to simply compare the two approaches, but to try to understand the reality of the authoritarianism in pedagogy that we are presently confronted with in variant degrees and at different levels.
Referencias
Banfield, G. (2004). What’s Really Wrong with Ethnography? International Education Journal, 4(4), 53-63.
Bhaskar, R. (1978). A realist theory of science. Brighton: Harvester Press.
Bhaskar, R. (1979). On the Possibility of Social Scientific Knowledge and the Limits of Naturalism. In Mephan, J., & Hillel Ruben, D. (Eds.), Issues in Marxist Philosophy, vol. 3, (pp. 107-39). Brighton, UK: Harvester Press.
Bhaskar, R. (1986). Scientific Realism and Human Emancipation. London: Verso.
Bhaskar, R. (1989). Reclaiming Reality: A Critical Introduction to Contemporary Philosophy. London: Verso.
Bhaskar, R. (1993). Dialectic: the pulse of freedom. London: Verso.
Bhaskar, R. (1998a). Societies. In Archer, M., Bhaskar, R., Collier, A., Lawson, T., & Norrie, A. (Eds.), Critical realism: Essential readings (pp. 221-236). London: Routledge
Bhaskar, R. (1998b). The possibility of naturalism. London: Routledge.
Cole, D.R. (2011a). Educational Life-forms: Deleuzian Teaching and Learning Practice. Rotterdam: Sense Publishers.
Cole, D.R. (2011b). The actions of affect in Deleuze – Others using language and the language that we make …’. Educational Philosophy and Theory, 43(6), 549-61.
Cole, D.R. (2012). Matter in Motion: The Educational Materialism of Gilles Deleuze. Educational Philosophy and Theory, 44(S1, May), 3-17.
Cole, D.R. (2013). Affective Literacies: Deleuze, Discipline and Power. In Semesky, I., & Masny, D. (Eds.), Deleuze and Education (pp. 94-112). Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
Cole, D.R., & Pullen, D. (Eds.). (2010). Multiliteracies in Motion: Current Theory and Practice. London and New York: Routledge.
Corson, D. (1991). Research and Bhaskar’s conception of educational discovery. Educational Theory, 41(2), 189-198.
Corson, D. (1997). Critical realism: An emancipatory philosophy for applied linguistics? Applied Linguistics, 18(2), 166-188.
Debord, G. (1994). The Society of the Spectacle (D. Nicholson-Smith, Trans.). New York: Zone Books.
Deleuze, G. (1994) Difference and Repetition (P. Patton, Trans.). New York: Columbia University Press.
Deleuze, G., & Guattari, F. (1984). Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia (R. Hurley, M. Steem and H.R. Lane, Trans.). London: The Athlone Press.
Deleuze, G., & Guattari, F. (1988). A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia II (B. Massumi, Trans.). London: The Athlone Press.
Habermas, J. (1987). The Theory of Communicative Action, Vol. 2. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Lazzarato, M. (2011). The Making of Indebted Man: an Essay on the Neoliberal Condition (J.D. Jordan, Trans.). Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, semiotext(e).
Marx, K. (1887). Capital: A Critique of Political Economy, Vol. 1 [Moore, S., & Aveling, E. Trans., Engels, F. (Ed.)]. Moscow: Progress Publishers.
Marx, K. (1969). The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte. New York: International Publishers. Originally published [1852].
Masny, D., & Cole, D.R. (Eds.). (2009) Multiple Literacies Theory: A Deleuzian Perspective. Rotterdam: Sense Publishers.
McLaren, P. (1998). Revolutionary Pedagogy in Post-Revolutionary Times: Rethinking the Political Economy of Critical Education. Educational Theory, 48(4), 431-62.
Whitehead, A. (1929). Process and Reality: An Essay in Cosmology, Gifford Lectures Delivered in the University of Edinburgh During the Session 1927-1928. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
