Critical Pedagogies of Neoliberalism

Abstract

294 33 32 31 30 29 28 27 26 25 24 23 22 21 20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 11 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 We live in difficult times, in times of monstrous chimeras and evil dreams and criminal follies. (Joseph Conrad, Under Western Eyes) This chapter responds to Giroux's (2006) call to 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 these uncertain times. 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. Not being a political scientist, historian, or sociologist, I am approaching this political project from the lens of a critical educator. So, from this perspective, it is proposed that one way to respond the aforementioned challenge is to develop a comprehensive conceptual framework for naming, organizing and evaluating/critiquing the broad range of neoliberal pedagogical tools that mediate constructions of consent and coercion among the neoliberal centres of power, nation-states, citizen-subjects and in all forms of social life. While pedagogy is essential to teach-ing and learning inside the classroom, pedagogy in the broader sense plays a key role in transmit-ting dominant ideologies, as well as notions of national and cultural identity through the reproduction and maintenance of particular discourses and languages (Bernstein 1999). Many neoliberal ideologies, values, economic polices and practices are shaped, conveyed and adopted through networks or constellations of top-down and bottom-up hegemonic tools by way of the media, politics, education, and policy institutes, etc. The vigorous claims of market superiority have not only moved nation-states closer to neo-liberalization, but have also resurrected nineteenth-century Social Darwinism in terms of valu-ing competition, efficiency and entrepreneurialism. As a result, this neoliberal turn (Brown 2003) transforms and acquiesces societies, spaces, subjectivities, and modes of organizing towards 'an increasingly broad range of neoliberal policy experiments, institutional innovations and politico-ideological projects' (Brenner and Theodore 2002: 28). These neoliberal turns are achieved through various pathways (i.e. think tanks, policy briefs, political agendas, universities, schools, etc.). BK-DEP-SPRINGER_ET_AL-160078-Chp26.indd 294 2/26/2016 6:30:06 PM Pedagogies of neoliberalism 295 45 44 43 42 41 40 39 38 37 36 35 34 33 32 31 30 29 28 27 26 25 24 23 22 21 20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 11 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 On top this, neoliberalization has been responsible for the widespread dismantling of the welfare state, the weakening of public education systems, decimation of the middle/working classes and perpetuation of the grotesque inequalities of wealth. Neoliberalization also demeans and devalues gender and identity while advancing class/racial injustices by absorbing the demo-cratic practices of civil society within narrow political-economic spaces (Giroux 2004: 106). This type of market fundamentalism is enabled through a myriad of neoliberal governments, corporations, media and society that inculcate citizen-subjects into believing the Thatcherite motto, that 'there is no alternative' (TINA) to our current market-driven society. As a result, the belief is that the only way for the poor and working classes to succeed is to become entre-preneurs and to adopt the neoliberal ideology and rhetoric of individual freedoms and personal responsibility through meritocracy (Rose 1998) sans public safety nets. Still, the outward attractiveness of neoliberalism's individual freedom, prosperity, and growth makes it challenging (Smith 2012) for the public to realize that neoliberalization is designed to benefit only a very small class of people and nation-states (Harvey 2005). A worldview such as this makes it easier to justify the thought that some people deserve much more than others because, after all, the neoliberal refrain is that we are all responsible for our own destinies (1). These pedagogical 'lessons' teach citizen-subjects and nation-states alike that their place in this new world order is to either comply and tow-the-line or suffer the consequences of failure and abject poverty, with no one to blame but themselves. Rather than the promise of demo-cratic citizenship, neoliberalization's uncritical lessons promote profits over people (Chomsky 2011) and values of economic dominance, exploitation, enterprise and entrepreneurship at all costs (McCafferty 2010: 543). To that end, this chapter introduces a discursive analytic framework aimed at unpacking the bricolage of neoliberalization (Mullen et al. 2013) called the 'pedagogies of neoliberalism'. This conceptualization helps to compilate the various neoliberal constructions of: knowledge production, reproductions and recontextualizations. Within the neoliberal frame, these pedago-gies are selected, disseminated, appropriated and repositioned to become new knowledges (Bernstein 1991) that teach the essence of the new world order while positioning the learner: citizen-subjects/nation-states as reifications of economic capital (Patrick 2013). By connecting the dots, it is theorized that this new framework can help to name, expose and critique the hegemony of neoliberalism's pedagogical tools that both teach and give rise to new social imagi-naries in the economy, the public sphere, popular sovereignty and rights (Taylor 2004). Finally, a framework such as the pedagogies of neoliberalism can help to expose how the pedagogies of neoliberalism are insidiously manifested in all walks of life, including education, media, econ-omy, labour market, etc., and explain how these implications hinder our rights to democracy and social justice.