Critical Communication Pedagogy or maybe Sacrificial Liberation?

 

“We can’t just write someone off for not believing what we believe, for not voting how we voted, for not living as we do; we have to inquire, understand where those beliefs comes from, and recognize that everyone has good reasons for their beliefs” (Fassett and Warren, p. 143)

We’ve been discussing the importance of vulnerability in class and in our readings for several weeks. I think that vulnerability is incredibly important for politics and therefore teaching because how can democracy be ethical if we don’t govern with the other? I don’t think there’s an ability to understand and work with one another without vulnerability.

We haven’t discussed the extent to which someone has to be vulnerable, but I think that different situations would require different levels of vulnerability. Vulnerability therefore seems like an orientation rather than a simple metric. Vulnerability is an openness to oneself and the other through the embracing of uncertainty and (to a certain extent) risk.

“…by failing to recognize that Vic might have valuable reasons undergirding his perspective, by failing to recognize that Vic might be struggling to make sense of this new information in light of previously sensible ideological frameworks (Lathner, 1991), by failing to remember that theory, if it is to be emancipatory, must be dialogic” (Fassett and Warren, p. 125)

Fassett and Warren, Palmer, and bell hooks discuss in different ways how critical (communication) pedagogy is a philosophy (and community) of truth and pain. The embracing of vulnerability means to share one’s lived experiences in connection to the curriculum. I think it’s very interesting how the sharing of experiences and connections can be a painful, joyful, and empowering process. This also reminds me of bell hooks’ discussion of pop culture and how it can be a useful tool for explaining and applying critical theory: by making theory a part of “real life” through pop culture, the impetus to share personal experience is galvanized because critical theory helps explain life.

Vulnerability and the connecting of “academic” literature usually resembles my experience in debate as both a competitor and coach. My debate experience is based in applying literature to make a compelling argument. Debate is a communication activity because it relies on persuasion. Persuasion, in my experience, is best achieved when one can boil an argument down to its bare bones and explain it by applying it to the judge’s daily life. As a coach, I notice that my debaters are the most engaged and active when I’m able to show that the literature not only connects to their competitive success, but also their personal development. That being said, my students usually wouldn’t ask for much feedback until they trusted me as their coach. This required me to be vulnerable with my students about my thoughts and experiences in debate and in return, they opened themselves up to me. This isn’t to say that I’m a perfect coach and that I’ve only be a member of perfectly harmonious squads—I’ve had my fair amount of tense discussions with my debaters. Rather, like in dialogic teaching in the classroom, and I’m realizing that the classroom can be embodied in may forums like van rides, squad rooms, diners, etc., true education, in order to be liberatory, must begin with vulnerability and the sharing of experience.  

“Vulnerability, then, is a way of constructing a parodic politic, a purposefully subversive stance, in the classroom. When we reveal ourselves as vulnerable, we also reveal the mechanisms of power’s production; we show the strategic rhetorics of educational practice as constructed, as repeated practice that regulates and mediates our communication, and therefore, our relationships with one another… [which] allows the classroom to be a space of the trickster, a space where the politics of our subjectivities are called into question. As a result of experiencing an accumulation of these subversive, vulnerable moments, we become better suited to the task of retheorizing educational activity” (Fassett and Warren, p. 93).

At the same time, I think that this is too simple of an analysis. I’ve been waiting for our readings to discuss how the exposure to pain is not uniform. I’ve wanted someone to talk to me about how certain teachers, like students, are exposed to pain to different degrees. How the discussing and sharing of pain can be violent and it’s particularly insidious when someone questions you about the validity of your pain. I would hope (and believe) that my professors would back me up when I share my experience but what about when a student disagrees with me as the teacher? I worry about the (hopefully) small minority of students that are active white supremacists or bigoted students in general. I don’t think that people should have a right to their opinion when the exposal of that opinion is violent in and of itself. What kinds of support do we foster for teachers who are imperfect but have inherited a legacy of being silenced and oppressed? I don’t think teachers should have to sacrifice themselves to be revolutionary and how liberatory can the project of education be if it’s is only taught by the most privileged? How can true revolutionary praxis be fostered if teachers are only part of dominate groups or are forced to sacrifice their health?

Violence isn’t evenly distributed and, by definition, nor are structural protections against oppression. The logic within critical communication pedagogy seems to individualize the teacher’s responsibility and critical pedagogy scholars need to attend to how privilege implicates exposure to violence in dialogic teaching. Freire states that the oppressor and the oppressed are equally hurt in a system of structural domination but that isn’t true given the material implications of politics and therefore teaching. When Fassett and Warren discuss how there is a normalization of pain and sacrifice within the academy as well as how they love their conservative godmother, there seems to be an implication of privilege because only certain individuals occupy positions where such violence and stakes are minimized.

I get that the struggle is not pretty or proper, but, in order to revolutionize the academy, we need to discuss how teaching burdens are unevenly distributed. I understand that oppressive violence from all the isms is endemic and therefore we have to try; however, I think it’s a move to innocence and an erasure of violence to not discuss the ways that certain teachers are harmed more than others in the process of dialogic teaching.