Policy Futures in Education, Volume 3, Number 2, 2005
Cultural Studies, Indigenous Knowledge and Pedagogies of Hope[1] MAKERE STEWART-HARAWIRA University of Alberta, Canada
ABSTRACT Notions of crisis and chaos have become the rationale for a new discourse in which empire is the logical outcome of a world no longer secure. One level at which this is manifested is in the rejection by the USA of international agreements to which it is signatory, in the demonstrated failure of the Bretton Woods system to meet its declared objectives, and in the increasingly broad and globalized resistance to globalization. Another is in the attacks on particular forms of knowledge and academic freedom by strong neoconservative elements which seek the reconstruction of societies within a particular cultural and ideological framework. In this context, the construction of pedagogies which articulate a different vision for global order has become a contested and critical task. This article argues two things: first, that the study of culture and ethnicity is vitally important in developing pedagogies for better ways of being in the world, and second, that indigenous cultural knowledge is profoundly relevant to this endeavour.
Introduction One of the characteristics of empire, Hardt & Negri suggest, is that it resides within a context – in this case, a world context – that ‘continually calls it into being’.[2] The Gulf War, according to US Secretary of Defence Rumsfield, provided a great strategic opportunity, ‘the kind of opportunity that World War Two offered – to refashion the world’.[3] The US Gulf War initiative not only saw the reorganizing of hegemony in preparation for a new imperial project [4], it signalled the beginning of a new and overt geopolitical strategy that, as Brezinzki clearly delineates [5], had the objective of establishing US dominance over the wealthiest energy resources. The ending of the Gulf War signalled the assumption by the USA of the role of global defender of freedom and dispenser of justice in a new variant of both the ‘Just War’ and ‘pre-emptive first strike’ doctrines. Thus, the decade of the 1990s saw a return to the doctrine of the ‘Just War’ as a justification for excursions into energy-rich regions, the militaristic overthrow of elected governments and the installation of USA-friendly administrations. This was demonstrated in a series of military attacks legitimated through a carefully crafted discourse of terrorism. The discourse of security which legitimated the redefining of USA–Eurasia relationships saw a shift from the assumption of the common road of universal civilization to global apartheid. In the disorder and chaos of the contemporary moment, as identities, structures and subjectivities get reordered in the flux of rapid integration, disintegration and reintegration, the need for meaning in the world is more potent than ever. Wallerstein conceives of the present moment as one of ‘transformational timespace’ in which we are required to engage in an exercise of ‘utopistics’, of deciding on the basis of ‘substantive rationality’ [6] our overall goals for the future and the best means of getting there. Education has historically been a critical site for both resistance and transformation in the restructuring and reordering of societies. In the context of the
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Makere Stewart-Harawira restructuring of knowledge and the militarization of schooling and society, arguably the most urgent issue for critical educators today is the deconstruction of the remaking of knowledge and meaning and the reconstruction of transformative pedagogies. Calls for a new political ontology [7], for new public pedagogies [8], are some of the responses to the crisis of the time. Indigenous ontologies or ways of being and knowing have much to contribute to the reconceptualizing of being in the world and in the development of radical pedagogies of hope. In this period of the extinguishment of hard won freedoms and rights and the unmaking of democracy, the articulation and embodiment of ancient ways of being in the world provides one means to creating new understandings of being in the world and with each other. Relevance of Cultural Studies One of my objectives in this article is to argue for the important role of cultural and ethnic studies programs in this endeavour and in the remaking of the meaning of ‘being in the world’. Before I elaborate this, however, I want to comment briefly on some of the contested aspects of cultural and ethnic studies. The first concerns approaches to cultural and ethnic studies which are in essence a voyeuristic study of the ‘Other’. As a site from where resistance has been articulated, the margins, hooks writes, has now become occupied by ‘experts’.[9] Cultural studies programmes have in some cases, hooks maintains, become new sites of colonization where self-nominated radical critical thinkers, educators and feminists, in an attempt to dismantle barriers of ‘them and us’, have relocated themselves not only within the margins but at the centre of those margins. It is now from that space that they reconstruct the discourse of the ‘Other’. There is thus no longer any need for those at the margins to speak or write or tell their stories other than to tell our pain for others to ‘tell it back to you in a such a way that it has become my own’.[10] In the process, the discourse of the ‘Other’ masks the absences, the gaps. And she is right. However, when I refer to the relevance of cultural studies, it is not voyeuristic examinations of the ‘Other’ that I have in mind. Rather, I have in mind the studies which involve cultural ways of coming to know and that involve deep sharing, respect and humility. The second issue is the attack on cultural and ethnic studies programmes that has been launched by the Right. Like many others, I am concerned, even outraged by the accusations of lack of intellectual rigor and academic relevance of cultural and ethnic studies that have been articulated to justify attacks on academic freedoms and the right to interrogate meanings, ideologies and policy making. The furore that erupted over the invitation to speak at Hamilton College extended to Ward Churchill by Nancy Rabinowitz and the deeply offensive and, some might say, deliberate misrepresentations of Churchill’s three-year-old article written post-9/11 and entitled ‘Some People Push Back: on the justice of roosting chickens’ [11] was the harbinger for an attack not just on academic freedoms but on any studies which challenge the received view of modernity’s triumph and the might of the Right. Cultural and ethnic studies rank high on the list of targets for such discrediting. These are deep issues with which to wrestle. They have been engaged with by others [12] and they require much more space than I give them here. My aim in this article is to highlight the reclaiming and rearticulating of indigenous knowledge, languages and cultures that has been critical in the revalidation of indigenous ways and identities and to suggest that these rearticulations have profound relevance as responses to the current crisis of education and global society. Foucault’s conceptualization of the insurrection of subordinated knowledge as ‘the reactivation of local knowledges ... in opposition to the scientific hierarchization of knowledges’ [13] as the problematizing of unitary, scientific discourses and the defining of a terrain of struggle, speaks to the returning and revalidating of traditional indigenous knowledge. In some important areas, this movement has gained strength as a voice of opposition to policies and practices of exploitation, commodification and exclusion. One of the catalysts for the strenuous combined efforts to reassert the validity of indigenous identities, languages and knowledge by indigenous peoples of the world was the decolonisation and developmentalism regime that became embedded during the 1960s regimes. This saw indigenous peoples renew endeavours to achieve at least limited forms of the
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Pedagogies of Hope same right to self-determination that the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights and its Covenants accords to all peoples. The global reconscientisation period of the 1970s saw the recentring of indigenous ontologies and epistemologies and the revitalisation of indigenous languages and cultures as a platform for proactive indigenous movements. In arguing for the importance of cultural and ethnic studies as a vehicle for enhancing the development of new ways of being and new public pedagogies, I do not suggest or imply that indigenous cultural knowledge is homogeneous, or adopt an essentialist stance. Neither would be true. Nonetheless, based on such knowledge that I have been given access to as a granddaughter of Waitaha [14], and that has been shared by others, there are certain principles and characteristics of ancient cultural knowledge that broadly speaking can be said to be held in common. I explore some aspects of these in the following section. Traditional Ontologies and Cultural Knowledge: some principles The first principle and central principle I wish to mention has to do with the profound interconnectedness of all existence. This principle governs all relationships. It governs relationships between all human beings, between all other forms of life, and binds all together within one continuous web of creation. Indigenous cultural knowledge understands creation as a process of continuous action or coming into being, the impetus for which emanates from the world of potential being. In Waitaha traditions, for example, the binding together of all the elements of existence occurs in a particular order within which human beings co-exist in direct genealogical relationship to all the other elements of existence. This relationship extends to the entire cosmos. Thus another principle is the inseparable nature of the relationship between the world of matter and the world of spirit. In regard to this, Oren Lyons of the Iroquois Nation, for instance, states, ‘The primary law of Indian government is the spiritual law. Spirituality is the highest form of politics, and our spirituality is directly involved in government’.[15] He goes on to say, ‘The primary law of Indian government is the spiritual law. Spirituality is the highest form of politics, and our spirituality is directly involved in government’.[16] This speaks also to indigenous understandings of knowledge and its production. ‘Traditional knowledge’, Carl Urion writes, ‘is living knowledge’.[17] By this he means that rather than being limited to a ‘codified canon’, traditional or indigenous knowledge is an expression of life itself, of how to live, and of the connection between all living things. Knowledge is regarded as having come from the Creator, hence knowledge is also understood as sacred. Urion describes indigenous knowledge as having four components: physical, mental, emotional and spiritual [18], a view that is shared by Maori. Vine Deloria Jnr provides a useful commentary on indigenous scientific knowledge and methodologies. Deloria identifies indigenous conceptions of knowledge as intrinsically connected to the lives and experiences of human beings, individuals and communities. The traditional Sioux understood the universe as a moral universe in which all knowledge and experience was drawn together in order to establish the ‘proper moral and ethical road’ or direction for human beings. Knowledge did not just exist in abstract form but was drawn from every gamut of individual and collective human experience. No experience, no piece of data was excluded or seen as invalid. All human experiences and all forms of knowledge contributed to the overall understandings and interpretations. The important task was to find the proper pattern of interpretation.[19] Hence it can be said that indigenous peoples have traditionally regarded knowledge as something that must be stood in its entire context. The traditional principles of traditional knowledge, Urion points out, remain fixed and provide the framework within which new experiences and situations are understood and given meaning.[20] As such, these principles are the means by which cultural knowledge becomes remade and given meaning in our time. Another principle is that every individual element of the natural world, each individual rock and stone, each individual animal and plant, every body of land and of water, has its own unique life force. This life force, which Maori refer to as mauri, is an essential element of all forms of wellness and is an expression of interrelationships. Mason Durie has stated, mauri or life force ‘spirals outwards seeking to establish communication with higher levels of organization and to find
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Makere Stewart-Harawira meaning by sharing a sense of common origin’.[21] This leads to the principle of guardianship which delineates our relationships with the natural world and our deep obligation to sustain and nurture the earth and all life. Related to deep interconnectedness is the principle of balance. This principle is given expression in the notion of reciprocity, which permeates every aspect of social and political life. It is reflected in the deep recognition of the dual nature of every action and counter-action. Reciprocity recognizes that nothing occurs without a corresponding action. Reciprocity means deeply acknowledging the gifts of the other and acting on this recognition in ways which deeply honour the other. At its deepest and most fundamental level, reciprocity requires that we acknowledge and honour the ‘being’ of the other. Understanding the indigenous mind, First Nations scholar Carl Urion tells us, is the first advice from the elders for those wishing to learn and understand indigenous languages and cultural knowledge.[22] The term ‘indigenous mind’ is sometimes used by people for purposes of comparison. However, traditional elders use the term to talk about ‘the mind all human beings were created with and the mind we were created to develop’.[23] He refers here, as I understand his writing, to the deep compassion that must come from truly experiencing and knowing our interconnectedness with each other. Here is no separation, no exclusion, for to exclude the other is to exclude oneself, and to hurt the other is to hurt oneself. The indigenous mind, then, is the compassionate mind. This principle of compassion could be said to be the element most lacking in today’s society and, certainly, is lacking in the constructions of public and foreign policy. If, as the Elders teach, we are required to develop minds which recognize deep connection, and to develop holistic understandings of knowledge that consider everything in terms of its connection to the whole, then the current pathways by which knowledge is created and given priority are antithetical to our goal. This has very real ramifications regarding the transformations that have occurred in the role of schooling and education, in the production of knowledge and in the militarization of school and society. Reconstructing Knowledge and Difference Under the aegis of the global economy the production of knowledge has played a central role in the transformation of the role of schooling and education. The instrumental emphasis on the concept of information as knowledge has been resoundingly denounced by leading educationalists. As Alan Burton-Jones states, ‘knowledge is fast becoming the most important form of global capital – hence knowledge capitalism’.[24] As probably the least understood and most undervalued of all economic activities, he declares, knowledge is ‘fundamentally altering the basis of economic activity’.[25] This has produced new forms of class relations within discourses of power that are related to the development of the ‘competitive state’. Nebulous and ambiguous discourses of technology and empirical forms of knowledge operate as new forms of exclusion/inclusion within discourses of deficit. Underpinning these new social divisions is the commodification of knowledge and the construction of new hierarchies that are determined by market value. Thomas Popkewitz suggests that the debates about the ordering of knowledge have implications about the governing of the self.[26] He relates this configuration of power/knowledge to the ‘functional ordering of knowledge’ that emerged by the end of the eighteenth century. The radical transformation in the conceptualization of nature and knowledge that occurred in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries saw the subjugation of nature-centred, holistic knowledge by ‘an historically unprecedented will to power’.[27] For Descartes, as one of the later architects of this transformation, the goal of this ‘will to power’ was ‘a practical philosophy’ that would make humankind the ‘masters and possessors of nature’ through ‘the invention of an infinity of devices through which we might enjoy, without any effort, the fruits of the earth and all its commodities as well as the preservation of health, which is undoubtedly the first good’.[28] As Popkewitz observes, this reordering enabled a revisioning of the principles of governance within a rationality that included the inner as well as the outer attributes of the individual.[29] The colonization of time and space within an empiricist configuration that constructed both time and space as controllable,
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Pedagogies of Hope stabilized and rational measurements defined as ‘a regulating effect of power’ occurred parallel to the colonization of the inner person.[30] The legitimating of sets of ideas occurs, Popkewitz reminds us, within particular historical conjunctures. These are allied to ‘changes in international institutions, social movements and technology and the knowledge economy’.[31] As he argues, this reordering of knowledge is closely allied to the construction of forms of imperialist governance. One of the effects of power, Popkewitz points out, is the ‘construction of distinctions that are made legitimate and reasonable’. This has particular relevance in terms of changes in patterns of inclusion/exclusion that ‘inscribe an unequal playing field’ within a globalized society. Norman Fairclough underscores this when he writes that rather than homogenizing, the neoliberal order entails ‘a specific restructuring of difference’.[32] At issue is a new structuring of identity within a ‘narrative of progress’ that contributes to ‘actualising forms of identity, new values and subjectivities within new formations of power’.[33] The reconstruction of knowledge as information has seen knowledge utilized as a strategic weapon in what have been dubbed ‘information wars’ reminiscent of Marshall McLuhan’s words that ‘World War III will be a global information war with no division between civilian and military participation’.[34] The Militarization of Society One of the embedded contradictions of globalization that has accompanied the privatization of goods and services and the liberalization of trade is that between the discourse of freedom and the tightening of individual liberties. In the USA, Giroux notes, schools have increasingly become sites for both surveillance as well as recruitment into the armed forces. Bush’s ‘No Child Left Behind’ provides for education funding to be tied to access to students’ records by the military. Under para. 9528 of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), (20 U.S.C., para. 7908), as amended by the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (P.L. No. 107-110), local educational agencies (LEAs) receiving assistance under the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 [If the LEA receives funds under the ESEA, all the secondary schools in that LEA are subject to the requirements in these laws.] to give military recruiters the same access to secondary school students as they provide to postsecondary institutions or to prospective employers. LEAs are also generally required to provide students’ names, addresses, and telephone listings to military recruiters, when requested.[35] The exception is when the student’s parent or guardian formally submit a request to the school to keep the student’s records private.[36] The militarization of schooling represents the emergence from visibilizing of practices which can historically be traced in debates about the role and function of education for the masses. As a disciplinary strategy, the armed forces have a long record. Indigenous students and students of colour, like others at the bottom of the socio-economic ladder, have long been prime targets for recruitment by armed forces. In the context of the increasing militarization of society and the everescalating ‘war on terror’, the increased targeting of these groups for recruitment is deeply disturbing. Nonetheless, the level and forms of surveillance that have accompanied market liberalism and the militarization of society are truly alarming. Foucault’s discussion of panopticism as a system of surveillance that operates by permitting the relentless and continual observation of inmates at the periphery by officials at the centre has been related to the re-emergence of new forms of surveillance that have accompanied market liberalism and the domination of the local by the global. The construction of new subjectivities within new forms of deficit in relation to particular forms of knowledge and technology captures the global spread of telecommunications and electronic networks within particular and specific constructions of the subject. Together these constitute new biopower technologies of power and domination. Deleuze contends that the shift from ‘disciplinary societies’ in which confinement was the main disciplinary technology towards ‘control societies that ... no longer operate by confining people but through continuous control and instant communication’.[37] This is evidenced in a shift in technologies of control which seemingly have no boundaries and in which the concepts of truth, honesty and transparency in relation to governance have become redundant. The consequence is
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Makere Stewart-Harawira the normalization of what David Smith has named ‘criminal deception’ legitimated by the September 2001 attack on the World Trade Centre.[38] The sweeping reforms which followed the 2001 attack on the World Trade Centre prompted past Inspector General of the CIA, Brian J. Weiss, to comment: The challenges ahead to civil liberties are significant. New technologies for data search and pattern recognition, combined with greater investigative freedom, have enormous potential for abuse. Even if used within the law, the capability of the government to search and correlate large amounts of data on its citizens ... frightens most Americans.[39] The US Patriot Act, officially entitled ‘Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism (USA PATRIOT ACT) Act of 2001’ is far-reaching in its impact. The wide-ranging removal of freedoms it institutes as well as its unconstitutional nature have been well documented. Its unconstitutional nature has been well documented. It is evidenced, for instance, in the finding by a US federal judge that parts of the Act are in violation of the First and Fifth Amendments to the US Constitution. US District Judge Audrey Collins stated in a ruling handed down on January 2004 that the ban on providing ‘expert advice or assistance’ is impermissibly vague, in violation of the First and Fifth Amendments. As written, the ruling stated, the law does not differentiate between impermissible advice on violence and encouraging the use of peaceful, non-violent means to achieve goals. By thus placing no limitation on the type of expert advice and assistance that is prohibited and banning the provision of all expert advice and assistance regardless of its nature, the judge declared, that section of the US Patriot Act is unconstitutional.[40] The power of the Act extends to the removal of human and civil rights for citizens of any country who pass through US airports en route to other destinations. The extinction of fundamental human rights by the USA through this means has been definitively articulated by senior lawyer for the US government, Mary Mason, who stated that ‘foreign citizens passing through American airports have almost no rights’.[41] Mason is reported as stating that because of the way in which the US government is now interpreting its powers, ‘passengers never intending to enter the USA connecting to international flights at US airports must prove they are no threat and could be allowed to enter the country’. Passengers who are ‘deemed to be inadmissible’ have ‘no constitutional rights even if later taken to an American prison’. According to the US government’s interpretation, as they are now on US territory, no constitutional rights accrue from any other country either, including their country of citizenship. This wilful denial of the most fundamental human rights flies in the face of international human rights standards and exposes the flagrant untruth of triumphant proclamations of freedom, democracy, and human dignity. Words such as freedom, progress, wealth, technology, which are central to some of modernity’s most triumphant discourses, have taken on profoundly new meaning. In the words of prize-winning Indian author, Arundhati Roy, ‘Love is hate, north is south, peace is war’.[42] Among the alarming global reverberations is the normalization of escalating levels of monitoring and control. The US Homelands Security Act, otherwise known as ‘Securing the Homeland, Strengthening the Nation’, which signed into law the Aviation and Transportation Security Act, provides for the access and transfer of all European Union (EU) passenger records, not restricted to US passengers, from the databases of EU carriers into the US Department of Homeland Security database. A preliminary report released by Privacy International in February 2004 noted that while in itself this creates enormous issues for individual privacy, it has also propelled the EU into planning for a centralized database that would not only facilitate data transfer to the EU but would also be utilized by the EU for law enforcement purposes. The Commission is thus ‘transformed from a protector of privacy rights into an opportunistic institution seeking to reduce privacy in its own interests’.[43] The United Kingdom has now moved to introduce its own system of ‘e-border’ surveillance which Privacy International describes as ‘bringing together the worst of the US systems’ [44] in a blatant disregard for fundamental civil rights, particularly the right to privacy regarding one’s personal life. These measures include biometric collection at borders, the collection of passenger information, the profiling of passengers before they arrive or depart the United Kingdom, the
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Pedagogies of Hope retention of personal information for an indeterminate amount of time, and the sharing of this information with a number of agencies for the purpose of general policing’.[45] Not the least of the problems to human rights and civil liberties that this entails is not only the fact that such wideranging data-mining infringes personal liberties and rights to privacy, but that the kind of datamining being proposed, which includes telephone and internet technology, is likely to be unreliable. The compiling of records such as flight information which includes personal financial data, cell phone transmissions, ISPs and other data is likely to result in incorrect conclusions regarding innocent people and does not guarantee improved monitoring of suspected terrorists. War and its Alternatives Foucault’s analysis of the relationship between power, right and truth speaks to the current production of new discourses of truth and right that permeate the ‘war on terrorism’.[46] In this racialized discourse of terrorism, the power to determine truth and right rests with today’s king, the imperial power which almost single-handedly has undermined the regime of multilateral agreements and treaties which protected the global commons, the environment, and the human rights of the individual. In this case, ‘terrorist’ as the defining signifier for the ‘Other’ is legitimated by the supporting discourses of ‘freedom’ and ‘democracy’, and on that basis, we are determined to be ‘either for us, or against us’. The construction of the terrorist ‘Other’ as non-White and non-Christian, and, by definition, non-civilized and barbaric, is produced through forms of power which, as Foucault states, ‘institutionalises, professionalises, and rewards its pursuit’.[47] In today’s hierarchization of difference, the discourse of terrorism functions to create new constructions of difference which ‘efface the domination intrinsic to power in order to present the latter at the level of appearance under two different aspects: on the one hand, as the legitimate rights of sovereignty, and on the other, as the legal obligation to obey it’.[48] In the context of the endless extension of the ‘war on terror’ in the face of exposed deceit and lies, and the new regime of ‘shoot to kill’ which targets anyone with possibly Eurasian features, carrying a satchel or wearing a jacket in warm weather [49], to the imprinting of finger tips at airports and the right to lock up without legal recourse anyone at will, it could well be argued that once again, peace has been transformed from ‘its humanist connotations’ with the potential for social transformation, to ‘[T]he miserable condition of survival, the extreme urgency of escaping death’.[50] The most pervasive and possibly the most dangerously incorrect of the discursive constructions of neoliberal globalization is that of inevitability. The discourse of ‘there is no alternative’, generally interpreted as no alternative to the redrawing of the global political landscape, to the hollowing-out of the nation state and to the establishment of a neoliberalist, market-based global economy and militarized global order is, quite simply, wrong. Alternatives exist. The critical ‘timespace’ of today’s moment, as Wallerstein insists, is one of choice. In this critical moment, the choice to articulate, promulgate and demonstrate an alternative world, a different and radicalized public pedagogy, is urgent. It is here that cultural and ethnic studies which include the study of other civilizational ontologies, dialogues and understandings are most salient in their interrogation of the construction of difference and in revealing modernity’s foundations of sand. In this regard, David Smith has taken up of Dussel’s naming of ‘pedagogical violence’ as part of modernity’s legacy through the myth of emancipative reason, to raise questions about ‘the conditions of knowledge and of knowing’, and of the possible character of knowledge in a ‘postimperium world’.[51] As critical educators, we too could choose to impart an ontological vision that bespeaks humanity’s wholeness and interrelatedness rather than the dichotomy of ‘them and us’, a vision that advocates collectivity rather than what has become ‘the normality of individuality’. As Smith argues, the normalizing of individuality involves ‘an acceptance of the impossibility of yet another theory of universal truth that can become a hammer in the hands of the righteous’. Smith’s plea is that we should be working for a deeper understanding and appreciation of the interdependent character of the global community’ which is based upon the ‘principle of complementarity’ and which points to the multiple ways in which cultures can ‘turn to each other for healing’.
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Makere Stewart-Harawira It is towards a similar vision, I believe, that Hardt & Negris’s model of cooperation speaks. Theirs, however, is a model based on the hybridity and flexibility of a multitude joined together in a joyous movement of constituent power that Passavant & Dean refer to as ‘self-organized democracy’.[52] Deleuze’s expression of immanence, recounted by Passavant, somewhat approximates the understanding of deep interconnectedness that lies at the heart of indigenous ontologies, when he writes of ‘Being as multiple multiplicities’, of ‘members of an infinite number of sets of attributes’, of ‘multiple voices raised in a clamour’ in which ‘Being is in common’ and in which ‘this multiplicity is joined together in common through this clamour’.[53] Cultural Studies, Cultural Knowledge and Radical Pedagogies of Hope On many accounts, the survival of human existence and the establishment of global justice requires an urgent re-visioning of the way in which we understand the past, present and future, of the way in which we view relationships, and in particular, of the form and shape of the global order. The traditional cultural principles that I have outlined here provide an important framework and context for the development of a different socio/politico/economic ontology for global order. This ontological framework is grounded in a new eco-humanism which is based on a deep understanding of the spiritual reality of existence. A corollary of this is the need for economic principles to be grounded in spiritual values which express the fundamental interconnectedness of all realms of being. Cultural studies provide one vehicle for engaging with other civilizational ontologies and traditional cosmologies and ontologies. The construction of a different cosmopolitico framework based on the interconnectedness of all life depends upon such critical pursuits. It could be well argued that the articulation of a politics and pedagogy of hope is the most urgent educational task today. As the editors of Tikkun declare, ‘creating a society of justice requires more than laws and economic integrity ... that political treaties do not end wars’.[54] ‘Peace’, they wrote, ‘ends wars and peace occurs at a personal level, in the hearts of citizens, not in the signatures of their governments’. In the same edition, Bauman stated, ‘Reports of the death of utopia are greatly exaggerated’.[55] ‘Utopia’, he said, ‘means hope. That things may be better than they are, that evil can be defeated, sorrow and despair conquered, and injustice tamed or repaired. Utopia will never die because humans cannot and will not stop hoping. If we ever stopped hoping, we would no longer be human’. Bauman likens the discrediting of utopia by the behaviour of despots to a throwing out of the baby with the bathwater. In this case, the baby to be saved is the idea that is endemic in utopias, that everyone’s happiness depends upon the happiness of all, that ‘the pursuit of happiness is a collective affair’. The ancients knew that human goodness could only be attained in a good society. Yet this very notion of utopia as manifested in public space is the first casualty of the annexation of the public by the private, split and divided into what Bauman calls ‘a multitude of private, strikingly similar portmanteaus, each made to the measure of the consumer’s bliss – meant, like all consumer joys, for utterly individual, lonely enjoyment even when relished in company’. Giroux in the same volume urges an understanding of hope as ‘part of a broader politics that acknowledges those social, economic, spiritual, and cultural conditions in the present that makes certain kinds of agency and democratic politics possible’.[56] He draws here on the words of philosopher Ernst Bloch, that ‘hope is not “something like nonsense or absolute fancy; rather it is not yet in the sense of a possibility; that is could be there if we could only do something for it”’ and suggests that in this view, hope becomes ‘a discourse of critique and social transformation’. ‘Hope’, Giroux writes, ‘makes the leap for us between critical education, which tells us what must be changed, political agency, which gives us the means to make change, and the concrete struggles through which change happens’.[57] Nonetheless, hope is not a blueprint for the future. What hope brings to us is the belief that ‘different futures are possible’. If hope is the essence of being human, then nothing is more critical to the project of humanity today than the development of pedagogies of hope. Cultural and ethnic studies programs offer one pathway to the study of Indigenous ontologies of deep interconnectedness. These ontologies provide one model for the development of transformative public pedagogies. They offer a vision for a new eco-humanism that is about global peace, global justice, and the sanctity of collective life.
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Pedagogies of Hope As educators seeking to develop radical pedagogies of hope and transformation, a critical response and collective responsibility is surely to uncover the truths that are embedded within these and similar ontologies and pedagogies, and to proclaim them in our schools, our colleges, our universities and public arenas as a response to the rampaging consumerism and rank individualism that dominates our politics, institutions and pedagogical practice, and as a proactive endeavour towards a different future. If, as critical educators, we believe the statement that ‘a different world is possible’, then surely these truths of the meaning of being human and of our collective purpose must become centred in our educational and public pedagogies. The outcome could well be that the possibility for transformation, the possibility for bringing into being a different world, will be made visible in our private lives, our public action, and in our classrooms. And that ultimately, through the collective efforts of we, the multitude, a new way of being in the world will be achieved – together. Notes [1] Parts of this article have previously appeared in M. Stewart-Harawira (2005) The New Imperial Order: indigenous responses to globalization. London: Zed Books; New Zealand & Australia: Huia Publishers. [2] M. Hardt & A. Negri (2000) Empire, p. 181. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. [3] Andrew J. Bacevich (2002) American Empire: the realities and consequences of US diplomacy, p. 227. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. [4] Ibid. [5] Zbigniew Brzezinski (1997) The Grand Chessboard: American primacy and its geostrategic imperatives. New York: Basic Books. [6] Immanuel Wallerstein (1998) Utopistics: or historical choices of the twenty-first century, pp. 1-3. New York: New Press. [7] See, for instance, R.W. Cox (1996) Towards a Posthegemonic Conceptualisation of World Order: reflections on the relevancy of Ibn Khaldun [1992] in R. Cox (1996) Approaches to World Order [with Timothy J. Sinclair], p. 144. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. [8] For example, Henry A. Giroux (2004a) The Terror of Neoliberalism: authoritarianism and the eclipse of democracy. Ontario: Garamound Press. [9] bell hooks (1990) Talking Back, in Russell Ferguson, Martha Gever, Trinh T. Minh-Ha & Cornel West (Eds) Out There: marginalization and contemporary culture. New York: New Museum of Contemporary Art; Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. [10] Ibid., p. 343. [11] Ward Churchill (2001) Some People Push Back: on the justice of roosting chickens. A supplement of Dark Night field notes, Pockets of Resistance, 11, 9 November. Available at: http://www.darknightpress.org/index.php?i=print&article=9 [12] For instance Henry A. Giroux (2004a) Public Pedagogy and the Politics of Neo-liberalism: making the political more pedagogical, in Policy Futures in Education, 2 (3 & 4). Available at: http://www.wwwords.co.uk/pfie/content/pdfs/2/issue2_3.asp [13] Michel Foucault (1980) Two Lectures, in C. Gordon (Ed.) Power/Knowledge. Selected Interviews and Other Writings, 1972-1977, p. 85. New York: Harvester Wheatsheaf. [14] Waitaha are one of the tribes or nations that make up the indigenous peoples of Aotearoa/New Zealand. The generic term, Maori, was adopted post-contact as an umbrella for New Zealand’s indigenous occupants. Generally speaking, however, Maori do not see themselves as homogeneous. [15] Oren Lyons (1984) Spirituality, Equality and Natural Law, in Leroy Little Bear, Menno Boldt & J. Anthony Long (Eds) Pathways to Self-Determination: Canadian Indians and the Canadian state. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. [16] Ibid., p. 5. [17] Carl Urion (1999) Recording First Nations Traditional Knowledge. Unpublished paper, U’mista Cultural Society, p. 11. [18] Ibid., p. 8.
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Makere Stewart-Harawira [19] Vine Deloria, Jnr (1999) If You Think about it, You Will See that it is True, in Vine Deloria, Jnr. Spirit and Reason: the Vine Deloria reader, pp. 40-60. Colorado: Fulcrum Publishing. [20] Urion, 1999, p. 5. [21] Mason Durie (2001) Mauri Ora:the dynamics of Maori health, p. 88 Auckland: Oxford University Press. [22] Urion, 1999, pp. 6-7. [23] Ibid., p. 7. [24] A. Burton-Jones (1999) in Michael Peters (2001) Poststructuralism, Marxism and Neoliberalism: between theory and politics. Oxford: Rowan & Littlefield. [25] Ibid [26] Thomas S. Popkewitz (1999) A Social Epistemology of Educational Research, in Thomas S. Popkewitz & Lynn Fendler (Eds) Critical Theories in Education: changing terrains of knowledge and politics. New York & London: Routledge. [27] Cf. C.S. Lewis (1962), cited B. Rich (1994), in Stewart-Harawira, 2005, p. 45. [28] Renee Descartes (1967) Discourse on the Method, in Philosophical Works of Descartes, trans. Elizabeth Haldane & G.R.T. Ross, p. 78. London: Cambridge University Press, cited in Harawira, 2005. [29] Popkewitz, 1999, p. 20. [30] Ibid., p. 23. [31] Ibid., p. 36. [32] Norman Fairclough (1999) Neo-liberalism as a focus for critical research on language: programmatic text, Globalisation Research Network, October. Available at: http://bank.rug.ac.be/global/ programme2.html [33] Ibid. [34] See Dave Moniz & Andrea Stone, Speed Crucial in Information War, USA Today. Available at http://www.usatoday.com/life/cyber/tech/2001/10/19/info-war.htm#more. The authors draw attention to a publication by former US Airforce Officer Al Campen, entitled The First Information War, referring to the merging of military and intelligence operations in the Persian Gulf War. [35] Elizabeth Burmaster, State Superintendent, Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction, ESEA Information Update, Revised October 5, 2004. Available at: http://www.dpi.state.wi.us/dpi/esea/ bul_0212.html [36] Justin Sane, WorkingForChange.com. Available at: http://www.alternet.org/story/ 21574/ [37] Gilles Deleuze (1995) A Portrait of Foucault, in Negotiations, 1972-1990, trans. M. Joughin. New York: Columbia University, cited in M. Peters (2001) Poststructuralism, Marxism and Neoliberalism: between theory and politics, p. 98. Oxford: Rowman & Littlefield. [38] David Geoffrey Smith (2003) On Enfraudening the Public Sphere, the Futility of Empire and the Future of Knowledge after ‘America’, Policy Futures in Education, 1(3), pp. 488-503. [39] Frederick P. Hitz & Brian J. Weiss (2004) Helping the CIA and the FBI Connect the Dots in the War against Terror, International Journal of Intelligence and Counter-Intelligence, 17(1), p 17. [40] CNN Law Centre. Available at http://www.cnn.com/2004/LAW/01/26/patriot.act.ap/ [41] CBC News, 11 August 2005, ‘Flyers Passing through USA have Few Rights, Arar Judge Told’. Available at: http://ottawa.cbc.ca/regional/servlet/View?filename=ot_flyrights_20050811 [42] Arundhati Roy (2001) Brutality Smeared in Peanut Butter: why America must stop the war now, Guardian Unlimited, 23 October. Available at: http://website.lineone.net/~jon.simmons/ roy/peanutb.htm [43] Privacy International (2004) Transferring Privacy. The Transfer of Passenger Records and the Abdication of Privacy Protection. February. [44] Privacy International (2005) UK introduces ‘E-Borders’ programme, proposing more surveillance and profiling of all. Available online at: http://www.privacyinternational.org/article.shtml?cmd[347]=x347-260609 [45] Ibid. [46] Foucault, 1980. [47] Ibid., p. 93
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Pedagogies of Hope [48] Ibid., p. 95. [49] I refer here to the recent shooting to death of an innocent young Brazilian by British police in the London Underground because he allegedly looked like a potential terrorist. This included disputed accounts that he was wearing a coat on a warm day. [50] Hardt & Negri, 2000, p. 65. [51] Smith, 2003. [52] Paul A. Passavant (2004) Postmodern Republicanism, in Paul Passavant & Jodi Dean (Eds) Empire’s New Clothes: reading Hardt and Negri, p. 3. New York: Routledge. [53] Ibid., p. 11. [54] George Vradenburg (2004) Tikkun at Eighteen, Tikkun: a monthly Jewish and interfaith critique of politics, culture and society, 19(6), p. 6. [55] Zygmunt Bauman (2004) To Hope is Human, Tikkun: a monthly Jewish and interfaith critique of politics, culture and society, 19(6), p. 65. [56] Henry A. Giroux (2004b) When Hope is Subversive, Tikkun: a monthly Jewish and interfaith critique of politics, culture and society, 19(6), p. 63. [57] Ibid.; italics in original.
MAKERE STEWART-HARAWIRA is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Educational Policy Studies at the University of Alberta, Canada. She writes on issues of globalization, global order, and indigenous peoples. She has recently published The New Imperial Order: indigenous responses to globalization (London: Zed Books; New Zealand & Australia: Huia Books, 2005). She has a chapter entitled ‘Traditional Peoples and Citizenship in the New Imperial Order’ in a book, Educating for Human Rights and Global Citizenship, to be published in 2006 by the University of Alberta Press. Other published work includes ‘Economic Globalization in the Pacific: implications for Maori and the role of Maori women’, in Helen Lansdowne & Michael Dobell (Eds) Women, Culture and Development in the Pacific (Centre for Asia-Pacific Initiatives, Victoria, BC and the University of Victoria Press, 2001). Correspondence: Dr Makere Stewart-Harawira, Department of Educational Policy Studies, 7-104 Education North, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta T6G 2G5, Canada (
[email protected]).
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